What's Left?
by Bong-Bang-Bing
Summary: Colleen had always struggled with her life in the Q.Z - finding it confining and oppressive. However that didn't mean she wanted to go back to the outside. Nobody wanted that. But when tangled up in a series of events out of her control, she is tossed straight back into an unforgiving, mess of a world. Can she finally find real safety, or will she lose everything along the way?
1. The World

**Autumn**

It smelt weird. I knew that was a really, _really_ stupid thing to complain about, considering all of the other things there were to be bothered by, but the smell was what got to me. Smoke, rot, sewer, garbage, you name it you can smell it in the Boston Quarantine Zone. I missed the fresh air of the outdoors. Even though we could technically go outside, it felt restricted. Tight. The walls and the soldiers, the duties and the curfews, it was all so confining.

I was worried I would forget what it was like otherwise. It had been eight years of living here, eight years in this completely different world. Whenever I would see kids, it would hit me like a ton of bricks – they _never_ knew what things were like before. This was just how their lives were. They had never known what if felt like to just be fucking _safe._ To not have to worry about infection, about ration cards, or brutality of the soldiers. That was another rattling thing. It kind of put it all in perspective, of how long it was taking for us to "fix" this. It wasn't getting fixed.

Everything felt flimsy in the Q.Z, like every piece of information you got was just propaganda from the soldiers. It was something about their brisk attitudes that just made them seem like machines, not people. Their lack of humanity also added to that effect. I swear, it was like as soon as you gave them a fucking badge all of their morals were flung out the window.

To put it briefly, life there was far from ideal. But I wasn't an idiot. I knew it was better than outside the walls. There weren't any infected in here, which was something I knew a lot of people couldn't say about their homes. I had heard of other not holding up – they just fell apart after a while from something or other, got overrun. Which wasn't reassuring.

It was dumb. I knew it was really dumb. But I would go outside sometimes. There were tunnels and stuff in the broken down apartments we got to live in, the soldiers didn't know about them because they wouldn't go in there unless someone made a fuss. I just wanted to see something green instead of just various shades of grey and brown. I wanted to breathe in fresh air and see a clear sky, with clouds and shit, not smoke. I wanted to hear birds singing and then get mad because birds still lived their lives like before – everything was normal to them. I wanted to question my weird train of thought, relax, then realize just how much danger I was in and quickly go back.

I wouldn't go alone, I wasn't that brave. No, I'd take Red with me. I felt like she knew what she was doing way more than I did, despite the fact she was younger than me by two or three years.

That's what we were doing one day, heading out just for shits and giggles again, when whether we knew it or not, things started to change for the both of us.

"Watch your head." She told me as she ducked under a large, partially collapsed beam. Sunlight shone through the cracks in the cement above our heads and made everything around us glow with an eerily scarce light.

I sighed slightly, "You say that every time, I'm not stupid you know." Her only response to that was a scoff. I rolled my eyes to myself.

Red tended to take point on these little ventures, I think it was a subconscious thing for her. She was pretty protective of me, either that or she was just convinced I'd die otherwise. Regardless, it was mildly appreciated.

She pushed aside the metal office desk we had placed against the hole to the outside and took a step out into the fresh air. Although she usually acted like it was a chore escorting me like this, I knew she enjoyed it just as much as I did. It was hard not to. She would never admit it though, that wasn't very Red-like. She didn't have to, I knew her enough to see through her like glass. She'd deny that too. I emerged from the stuffy abandoned building as well, inhaling deeply, feeling like my lungs were being cleansed immediately.

We were on the fifth or sixth floor of an old skyscraper. It had been split down the middle from the bombs, and we were looking out from the side that had no walls. From here we could see quite a bit of patchy, ruined skyline. It was odd, especially since I had been around when it was intact. Red had too, but she was from like Georgia or something, not New England. She wasn't as used to urban settings and I consistently made fun of her for it. She was a hick, and her small little accent that would show up in a few of her words would just remind me of that.

I proceeded forward and sat on the edge of the surprisingly sturdy crumbled floor, staring out in the distance. The sky was starting to turn a pinkish orange, the sun dipping just a bit out of sight to our left. She joined me at my side with an "oomph". I noticed she had her pistol out and held loosely in her hand. Mine was securely tucked in my back belt loop. Red was ever the cautious one.

She took another deep, audible breath before slowly speaking, "Wonder what it is that makes this air feel so much goddamn different than the shit back there." She picked up a piece of rubble from her side and tossed it in the distance, somehow managing to make it land in a small puddle. I whistled at her aim and she laughed lightly.

"Show off." I mumbled under my breath. She lightly punched my arm and I feigned genuine injury, which she just rolled her eyes at. I looked back at our surroundings and focused more on the sun's position, "So are we facing... south?"

"North." She corrected me immediately.

I looked at her with an amused expression, "That response was way too fast, what are you a fucking compass?"

"What are you, in third grade? Who doesn't know which way the sun sets?" She fiddled slightly with her gun, flicking the safety on and off. If anyone else did that it'd make me nervous, but she knew what she was doing.

I gasped at her remark, "Hey, fuck you! I'll have you know I'm a proud high school graduate, thank you very much!" A pang of something shot through my chest at the realization that those credentials actually might be considered impressive nowadays.

"Yeah well you're lookin' at a college graduate right here." Her voice was hollow.

I scoffed at her in disbelief, "Bullshit, for what? Gun familiarity? Pebble throwing? Swearing articulation?" She shot me a brief look that clearly showed my sass wasn't appreciated, but I was genuinely curious.

She grumbled something incoherent under her breath before actually answering me, "I've got an Associates in Art." I could see a blush coming to her cheeks because she _knew_ how much I was going to freak out over that.

"What?! Since when are you an artist?!" I turned to face her completely, noting the color in her cheeks and poking one with my index finger – prompting her to slap my hand away though a smile came to her face, "Awh, is Red turning red?"

"I will throw you from this building." She said, finally meeting my eyes, "Don't test me." I actually believed her, to an extent.

"Oh, why don't you paint me a fucking watercolor landscape while you're at it, van Gogh?" I nudged her with my elbow and she just blushed even more. It was weird to see her like this, she looked... younger than normal. More immature. It was odd to think of then, but she was only like, twenty-eight or something. That was young.

She shouldn't be the way she was – hardened, gruff. She should be out there doing stupid shit, getting drunk at clubs and making terrible decisions. But instead she was here, with me, in a broken in half high-rise staring out at the destroyed city, in a world full of fungi consumed maniacs that used to be people and that could be us. The smile slid slowly from my face. She didn't seem to notice.

"Will you shut the fuck up already? Jesus I never should've told you that." She fiddled with the bracelet on her wrist, a nervous habit of hers – one of the few I could detect.

I shook my head back and forth slightly, returning to reality and the conversation, "No no, I'm glad you did. Now I know who to go to when I need a caricature of a clicker drawn." Mentioning a clicker made the air shift just a bit. Hell, mentioning anything about the infected made things different. Sort of shoved you brutally straight back into the real world. She experienced the same thing, I could tell .

She emit a drawn out sigh, looking away from me, before speaking slowly, "We can't keep doin' this, Colleen." Her voice was low, quiet, but had the usual Red-like firmness I had grown oh so accustomed to.

My eyes drifted to my feet that dangled off the ledge we were on, tracing the patterns on the laces of my boots, knowing what she was talking about without needing to ask, "And why's that?" I knew why. There were a dozen reasons why. I just didn't want to give this up.

I could basically feel her frustration emanating off of her in tangible waves, "You know damn well why. Shit's gettin' tighter around here and I can't keep coverin' your ass forever. I have connections, yeah, and people owe me some favors, but that shit runs out eventually, okay?" I knew she had to do some stuff to keep people quiet around here. That was evident.

She was a smuggler, too. Helped people get stuff from outside the walls if they needed it. That was a dangerous job. You could get caught by soldiers, shot, infected, the dangers of it were innumerable, but the compensation was usually well worth it. The soldiers were ridiculously stingy with ration cards, we were all nearly starving. Red kept me going with hers, she had a lot, and she was the only one there that gave a rat's ass about what happened to me. I owed her my life a hundred times over.

She had to pay people off pretty frequently, both to keep her smuggling on the down low, and to not report our sneaking out like this. Other people did it, but those people were a bit more threatening. Their way of paying off was breaking your fingers or shoving a gun barrel against your forehead, which was equally as effective, but Red didn't run that way. Not to say she wasn't brutal, because she definitely could be. Just not with this sort of thing. I guess she was running low on bribes. She hadn't told me.

"Why didn't you say anything...?" My voice was floaty. Light. Like if a particularly strong breeze came along, it'd blow my words away and she wouldn't be able to hear them.

She tucked some of her red hair behind her ear, "Didn't think ya cared. As long as you can get your precious outdoorsy time, what's it matter what Red's gotta do, right?" Her accent was coming on stronger than usual. It did that when she was emotional. Which was rare.

I turned to look at her fully but she wouldn't match my gaze, seeming to be extremely interested in the ruins in the distance all of a sudden. What she said made my chest feel hollow.

"You think I don't care about what you do for me?" The sounds of birds chirping could be heard somewhere nearby. It didn't fit this conversation right now. Normally they would've relaxed me, now I just got mad because of their freedom. Because of their normality.

Nothing was said for a while. Her jaw set and she looked down, anywhere that wasn't at me, really. Then she stood up, walking slightly away from me, back now turned with her arms crossed. I got to my feet too, wondering what was up her ass that day in particular. We didn't fight. This was odd, foreign and unwanted. It seemed to come out of nowhere too.

"No... no, it's just..." She dug her hand into her hair. This was unlike her, this uncertainty so clearly felt in the air. She was always so solid and sure of herself. I didn't like this.

"What? What's going on, Red?" I asked, my voice really, _really_ sincere for the first time in a while now. I took a few steps forward.

She took a very shaky breath, putting her hands on her hips and tilting her head up at the ceiling for a moment, "It's getting... really bad, Colleen."

I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. For some reason this was clearly difficult for her to talk about, which had never happened before, "...What is? The bribes? Red, look, we don't have to-"

"- _No_ , not the _fucking_ bribes." She turned around to face me, glaring slightly. I knew she wasn't mad at me, but Jesus Christ if looks could kill. It faded in a few lingering seconds, though, the anger fell right from her face and was replaced with what I might call loss, "...The world."


	2. Worry

Her words made my blood turn to ice and my stomach drop into my shoes. She didn't usually talk about things like this. In fact, the only reason I knew a lot of the stuff I did about her is because she had even less of a filter when she was drunk. From what I'd gathered, her past was very... complex. Lets just say it made me respect her all the more, when I hadn't thought that possible.

The seriousness that this conversation had so abruptly adopted wasn't welcome. Why couldn't we just go back to making fun of each other and hurling empty threats? That was our thing. It was what we did. It was how we coped with everything. Not like this. Arguments weren't something we had unless they were playful and meaningless.

I quite literally forced a small little smirk onto my face as I shook my head back and forth slightly, the lingering tension in the air growing thicker, "You're making it sound like there's-"

Whatever dumb thing I planned on saying was immediately interrupted by a now even more upset Red, "- _Don't_ turn this fucking thing around, Colleen. We _need_ to talk about this, and I don't care if you want to go back into your little fantasy world of sneaking outside to listen to the goddamn birds or whatever shit runs through your stupid head all the time, this is _real,_ and it's _happening_ , whether you want to deal with it or not." She was still holding her gun, this time in a white-knuckled fist, and for the first time ever it was starting to unsettle me.

What she said hurt. And it showed through a little bit on my face. Her expression changed for a second, it became tinged with guilt, and although it went back to how it was before, something was behind her eyes that only someone who knew her well could interpret.

Either way, I wasn't letting that slide. I scoffed at her in mild disbelief, "Good to know that you view me as an immature child. Sorry, my mom forgot to pay you for babysitting me, better go have a chat with her." My words were oddly empty, lacking the usual sarcastic force behind them that they would've had in any other situation. It was sobering to hear, for the both of us.

She groaned quietly to herself at my behavior, pinching the bridge of her nose – another habit of hers, "Stop that, I just mean-"

"-No I know what you fucking mean, Red." Buried emotions were coming up that had been kept down for what felt like forever. I had no idea why they were choosing that moment to surface, but I couldn't control what was happening, "I get it. I'm not 'fit' for this world like you are, I'm 'not tough enough', I don't have the balls to do the 'shit that needs to get done'. Well fucking _excuse_ me for wanting to retain some of my humanity!" I was shouting then, unable to keep my volume low. The birds nearby scattered at the sudden noise, the sound of their flapping wings seeming to echo through my skull, "I _know_ that things are terrible now, _everyone_ knows that! But I don't want to have to do the _shit_ you do!" I stepped closer to her, emphasizing my next words, "I don't want to risk my life just to get enough food to survive, I don't want to get some weird ass lung disease because of consistent city fume inhalation, I don't want to have to know how a gas mask works so I don't die from just _fucking_ _breathing_ , and I don't want to stop caring about things like enjoying the fucking outdoors every once in a while because then this world wins and I can't let it win, Red." My voice broke as I trailed off from my unanticipated rant abruptly. My previously tense shoulders slumped and our eye contact broke on my behalf.

The air got so heavy I felt like I was going to sink through the floor. Hell, at that moment I almost wanted to. It was like my words were a toxic gas that lingered around us and pressed down on our backs. My body felt weighted.

I heard her take a deep breath, like she was composing herself, but I couldn't look at her. My head started to throb, "It's winning, Colleen." Her voice was nearly inaudible. If the birds hadn't flown away, their chirping probably would've drowned it out. But I caught it. And my chest constricted.

I reached up and grasped at my skull tightly with one hand, sighing in frustration – at what, I'm honestly not sure, "Why the fuck did you even bring this up, anyway?" Our volumes had both drastically decreased from what they previously were. Now it was like we were more mumbling to ourselves than anything else. If we hadn't been listening so intently to one another, surely we never would've heard any of this.

"I..." The tone to her voice caught my attention. She sounded so unstable. So unlike herself. I forced myself to look up at her and was extremely startled when I saw her lip quivering. Something behind her eyes showed perfectly that she was about ready to emotionally snap in half. Her mouth was slightly open like she was going to keep speaking, but nothing came out.

I took a step closer and promptly froze when she held up her hand, stopping me. She sniffled very slightly before shaking her head back and forth, using her famous willpower to keep it together as she managed out a few words, "...I saw a... kid."

I patiently waited to give her time, but the silence that followed was so long I finally just spoke, "...yeah? What about it?" I felt like I was missing something obvious here, and when she shot me a genuine death glare I realized that I must've.

"He was a fucking _Runner_ , Colleen." She spoke the word through clenched teeth. Almost like it was a swear, I mean, if she cared about swearing. That made more sense now.

It was sort of rare to see infected that were children. I'm not sure why that is. It wasn't like they were spared or anything, despite how gruesome that thought is. They just didn't seem to be around. Maybe their tiny little bodies couldn't handle the infection and it killed them or something, I didn't know and I doubted anyone ever would. Either way, it was rattling when you saw one. The blankness to their eyes, the blood usually splattered on their clothes, their predatory stares and jerky movements. It got to you. Stuck in your head. But I'm sure that Red had seen plenty, at least a hell of a lot more than me. Why did this one affect her so much?

"I don't understand." Was all that I said. Despite what was going on, I still felt like I couldn't be anything less than 100% honest with Red. That was how it had always been. The feeling seemed to be mutual.

Our eyes met again and the contact was held. She wasn't shooting me daggers, though, she was trying _desperately_ to convey something to me without having to say it. But I just couldn't catch it, and I internally cursed myself over and over again for that inability. Instead, I watched her endure emotional turmoil as she realized I wasn't going to let this go. My brow crinkled in worry as she slowly ran her palm down her face, sighing.

"He looked..." Her voice was airy and quiet. So not Red-like. There was a pause, followed by a deep inhale in what seemed like preparation. I noticed her beginning to blink rapidly, staring at the ceiling now, and started to worry she may break down in tears. I had never once seen Red cry. She never even got close. I wouldn't know what to do in that situation, "... _Christ,_ Colleen, he looked just like Dami-" She couldn't get the rest of his name out, instead emitting what sounded sort of like a suppressed sob. A hand moved to her mouth and a blush came to her cheeks, but she wasn't crying, from what I could see.

Either way I went forward, not caring what she said or did, and wrapped her tightly in my arms. She didn't return the gesture but she didn't resist it either, sort of just letting her body untense as I could feel her start shaking.

She was talking about her younger brother – Damian. He had died, early on in the outbreak, and Red was absolutely convinced it was her fault. The guilt plagued her to that day. She only told me about it when she got drunk once, and even then it was hard to piece it together. From what I gathered, he got cornered by infected when they were holing up in a place Red said was safe. He didn't die from that initial attack, but got bitten, and a survivor in her group at the time shot him in the head immediately. He was only nine.

That was one of the things that made her the way she was that day – hardened, cold. Though I had made her lighten up a bit, only I had ever been able to do that. To everyone else, they got the same no-nonsense, mildly sassy attitude as usual. I was the only exception. The other things I only knew tidbits about, like how her dad tried to slit her throat over a ration card back in the Atlanta Q.Z, or how her cousin got run over by a soldier truck right in front of her face. My hold on her tightened even more. I felt her hands loosely grip at the front of my shirt, her breathing audible and labored.

Out of everything, Damien was the most touchy topic for her. She had a huge soft spot for kids, even teenagers. If she ever thought of him, unintentionally or otherwise, she would usually excuse herself – get away from me, or anyone for that matter. She was instinctively a loner, that is until I came in and asserted myself into her life whether she liked it or not. But she always put on her tough face. Stiff upper lip, furrowed brow, cold eyes. Sometimes it was almost impossible to see what was underneath, to see her sweet, compassionate interior that she kept so well hidden with all of her defensiveness and standoffish ways.

We stayed that way for a long time, minutes flying by, then hours. Our argument had been forgotten as we just let the slight denial settle back down and envelop us in its conflicting false comfort. The sun dipped fully out of sight and was replaced by the moon, sky darkening, air getting colder. It was only then that she suddenly squirmed from my grasp, inhaling sharply as if waking from some type of slumber, blinking to herself and staring at her hands.

"Shit what time is it?" She mumbled, examining our surroundings and noting the stars now visible in the sky, " _Fuck,_ I'm so late."

I watched in slight, unspoken awe as she returned right back to her usual self. Business as usual. Stressed, slightly disorganized Red. She managed to completely regulate her breathing and she gave me this look. It had so many hidden meanings behind it I was overwhelmed. How could someone manage to communicate that much with just their fucking eyes? She had so many layers to her, and most people never got past the first one. I was about five deep and counting. She had said all she needed to, not actually vocally coaxing me as she headed straight into the tunnel back the way we had come. I was at her heels. Neither of us spoke a word until we were safely back inside my apartment building.

It was in this sort of common room place, a hole in the wall hidden moderately well by a bookshelf. The soldiers didn't have the smarts to actually inspect anything so they never even came close to noticing it. There were a few dudes playing poker at a nearby table. I saw a meager arrangement of ration cards in the pile, along with a loaded keyring, a pack of gum and a yo-yo. We got a few looks from them, but it was old news and they quickly returned to their game.

Still wordless, I followed Red back to my place. Curfew was up, she couldn't go to hers, even though it was right across the street. No point in risking it. I tugged my keys from my pocket and jammed them into my slightly ineffective lock, jiggling them in the weird, annoying way that was necessary to gain access. I held the door open for her and trailed in slowly behind, shutting it as quietly as possible.

This was sort of routine. She stayed at my place pretty frequently, and I at hers. Nothing new here, but I watched her with slightly more intent as she moved to a wall cabinet in my meager kitchen and retrieved her worn out backpack. Setting it down on a nearby counter, she opened it and started rummaging around. She noticed my staring and looked up at me with a raised eyebrow. Turning away, I moved to the nearby armchair and sat down with an audible exhale.

It was only then that the silence started to get awkward. Tense. I hated that, but I didn't know what to say, so I just kept my mouth shut. Everything that she had said back there was just echoing through my head again. " _We can't keep doin' this, Colleen.", "As long as you get your precious outdoorsy time, what's it matter what Red's gotta do, right?", "This is_ real, _and it's_ happening _, whether you want to deal with it or not."_ Now here she was, like nothing had happened, returned completely to normal. Was that good? Or bad? Should we talk about it? What was there to talk about? My head started to hurt again and I sighed, burying my face into my hands. I felt her eyes move to me.

"What are you late for?" I asked her slowly, not moving an inch. I could still hear her rummaging, now opening random cabinets in my kitchen for some reason. Looking for something maybe.

"Just a job. There's no point in trying to go now, I'm sure it's already fucked." She was so monotone. It sounded dangerous though.

Giving in and looking up at her, we locked eyes for a second and she stopped whatever she was doing, "Isn't that gonna backfire, or something?" The people she smuggled for weren't ones that you wanted on your bad side, that was for sure.

She shrugged a bit, "There's always a little backlash from any job. Whatever. I can just do it later, if they really want it done. What're they gonna do, find someone else?" Her hands moved to her hair, which she let out of the tight ponytail it was in. Her flowing red locks dropped loosely down past her shoulders, and she ruffled the top of her scalp with her hand, running her fingers through the strands with a dragging breath.

Sleep started to tug at my eyes and I pushed myself to my feet with considerable difficulty, heading to my room tucked away right next to the kitchen where Red continued to putter. Before I could get out of her sight, however, she reached and grabbed my arm, drawing my attention.

"Where's your bourbon?" She asked, "C'mon, lets have a drink or two. Or three. Or four."

So that's what she had been looking for. Subconsciously my eyes drifted to the drawer below the sink, and she knew me all too well, following my gaze and immediately going straight for it. She tugged out the half-full bottle triumphantly, sloshing the liquid about in it as she wiggled her brows at me. She grabbed two glasses and started to pour, which is when I interrupted her.

I thrusted my hand forward and grabbed her wrist that held the whiskey, making our gazes meet, "We shouldn't, Red. Lets just go to sleep." It was dumb to drink when you were sad. Even though she was burying it, she was sad, and I didn't want her to drown her sorrows. That was a bad, potentially damaging habit to get into.

She just looked really confused, "Since when are you all straight edge?" She tried to escape from my grasp, to at least pour herself a drink, but I just tightened my grip, making her grumble, "What the hell, man?"

I waited until she she locked eyes with me again as I spoke firmly, "I worry about you." My words were startlingly sincere, enough to jar anyone, especially her. They meant a lot more than they seemed to, and I could tell she knew that. I was referencing what had happened earlier, with the entire mentioning of Damien thing and her just barely stopped emotional breakdown. I was glad she caught on so quick, so that we didn't have to have this long, detailed exposition. Just one sentence did the trick if you said it the right way.

Setting her jaw, she put the bottle down and let it go. I released her hand, watching her arm drift back to her side. She didn't look defeated, just complacent.

Sighing lightly she jutted her head slightly in the direction of my small little lounge area, "Want me to couch it?" She was already making her way over there without even hearing my answer.

"Nah, you did last time."

She stopped where she stood and turned around on her heel, looking into my bedroom at my queen sized bed. I saw the flicker of weariness on her face for a moment and I started to notice the slowness of her movements. She was exhausted, but she would never admit it. How much sleep did she actually get, I wondered? And how much of that sleep was sound? I gestured towards the door, indicating she could go in.

She rolled her head on her neck, "I never feel right 'bout takin' your bed in your own place." Her arms crossed loosely.

I smiled weakly at her, "Oh shut up, get in there." Her politeness was just there for show, I knew she didn't want to sleep on my rock solid couch. No, she'd rather spend the night on my dirt-solid mattress with my ridiculously thin blankets. Fucking winter was coming and I almost froze to death every night.

She raised her hands up in fake defense, "Alright, you're the boss." As she headed in, she stopped in my doorway, drawing my attention once more. I cocked a brow at her. She looked me up and down briefly before just rolling her eyes, reaching forward and intertwining our fingers together. I tensed ever so slightly but allowed myself to be pulled alongside her into my room, "Just fucking bunk with me. That couch is a pile of bricks with upholstery."

We had done this before, it wasn't a big deal. But as I kicked off my boots into the corner and tugged my heavy jacket off my shoulders, sliding beneath the covers, it felt different. Like it... meant something. I don't know. It's incredibly hard to explain if you didn't know Red – if you didn't have the same interactions and history with her that I had.

We were both tired as fuck and she was out like a light. I was having some trouble, though. She was facing away from me, towards my wall. I turned to stare at her back. It was then that she started to mumble things, and to shudder slightly every now and then. She was having a bad dream. My chest tightened. I scooted closer to her and wrapped my arms around her middle, tugging her against me and feeling her steady once she was in my grasp.

I fell asleep fine after that.


	3. Outside

"Get _up."_ The words were whispered harshly into my ear, voice immediately recognizable but the tone one I had never heard before. My eyes shot open and I wasn't surprised to see Red standing next to me in my room. However I _was_ surprised to see her holding her gun with white knuckles – safety off, looking to be completely on her guard. I sat up, any feelings of sleepy slowness drained from me immediately.

I had only ever seen her like this once or twice – when we would occasionally run into infected on our little trips outside the walls. Never like this, never in my apartment, when we were safe. Well, safe is a relative term I guess. She stood next to the sole window there, and from what I could see it was pitch black outside. Why was she awake? Why did she have her gun out? I had so many questions but I didn't actually ask any of them, being too confused to speak.

She glanced at me in her peripheral vision, gaze being focused on something outside the room, and didn't say anything else. It was then that I heard footsteps, and some guy ran in. My vision was still slightly blurred from sleep and I blinked a few hard times to get it to steady enough to recognize him. When I did, my surprise overcame my frustrating muteness.

"Hank?" Apparently my voice was way too loud, because both of them gestured frantically for me to shut up. I lowered my volume to a whisper like Red's, "The fuck are you doing here? What's going-"

" _Shh!"_ He hissed at me suddenly with his trademark deep voice and I jumped a bit where I sat. Hank was from deeper in the Q.Z, in the more sketchy part that Red didn't like me going to. She had to do business there pretty often, so she had a lot of connections in the area, but it was shifty. I always felt like some dude was gonna pull me into an alley and shiv me in the neck. He was the only one I had ever had a conversation with that didn't make me feel threatened or uncomfortable. I think he sold like, guns or something. I couldn't remember. No matter the case, there was _no_ reason for him to be in my apartment at that moment, at least not one I could think of.

He pressed himself against the wall next to my open bedroom door, and I noticed a hammer in his hand. It was too dark to see, but it was glistening slightly with what I assumed was blood. Jesus Christ, what was happening?

It was then that I heard a loud bang and I almost yelped aloud, but my body settled for tensing up like a statue instead. Something had slammed into my front door, which was visible from where I currently was. I saw it shake from the impact, but someone had dead bolted it. That lock was flimsy, it wouldn't hold for long.

Red rushed forward and grabbed me, pulling me along with her until I was at her side – out of sight now if someone barged in. I guess she didn't trust my ability to remain quiet because she clamped one hand firmly over my mouth. I mumbled quietly in protest and she just glared at me so sternly I shut right up.

The banging sounded again, and again. Red was holding her breath, finger really close to the trigger of her pistol. I noticed her make eye contact with Hank and she nodded at him. What were they communicating? I felt severely out of the loop in a way that might put me at literal risk. I could hear the lock loosening more and more with every blow it took, until finally, the inevitable happened.

My door was thrown open so forcefully that it was sent slamming into the wall, knocking something over. I didn't know what, but I glared to myself. They were fucking up my house and I didn't even know them. Not cool. Someone came inside. From what I could hear, there was only one. All this fuss over one dude? Okay I was really confused. I had heard stories and seen proof of Red taking down four guys all by herself. One wouldn't even make her flinch. Now she wasn't only super defensive, she had called for backup. This made no sense.

There were like, three rooms in this apartment, it would take five seconds to search. I'm assuming that the person scanned the kitchen/living room briefly, then I heard them coming our way. From the way these two were acting I assumed it was some two hundred-fifty pound wall of muscle that just barged into my place, but when he came briefly in view of the doorway, I saw he was average height and weight, maybe even below average. Okay what the hell? Luckily it was dark enough that he didn't see me right away. There was just enough time before he noticed Red and I for Hank to strike.

Surprising the intruder and even fucking me, Hank charged out of his hiding place like a rabid wolf and brought his hammer down directly into the guy's forehead. He cried out and staggered backwards, but Hank was brutal and just came at him again, tackling him out of sight. I listened intently but had a hard time trying to imagine what was happening just from all the commotion they were making. Red took her hand from my mouth and locked eyes with me.

Letting out a dragging breath she had definitely been holding in, she released me and went over to the corner, picking up my boots and jacket before tossing them at me. In my disoriented state I somehow managed to catch them, barely, looking at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Put your shit on, we need to go." She seemed to be completely unfazed by the sounds of the struggle going on in the next room, I assumed she just had confidence in Hank's ability to look after himself. Either that or she was more concerned about my safety than his. She wasn't whispering anymore. I guessed that being quiet was pointless now that the intruder had shouted and since the conflict in the other room was loud as fuck. Walls were thin here, too.

Complying, I just silently reminded myself over and over again in my head that Red had never led me astray before, especially not in serious situations like this. I could ask questions when we were safe, or at least saf _er._ I watched her as she moved to the window and opened it up. There was no fire escape or anything and we were on the second floor. What was she doing?

I heard a really gross sounding snap come from the other room, followed by heavy, raspy breathing. Hank was okay. I moved to look, to at least catch a glimpse, and saw him shutting the door again – barricading it with my couch. I let out a shaky breath, just wishing I knew what was going on.

Red bounced slightly where she stood, regulating her breathing in what seemed like preparation as she shook her hands a bit. A cold breeze started to drift in from the outside and it sent a shiver down my spine.

I finally afforded myself one question, "Where are we going?" She shot me this look, a look that showed me she thought not asking her anything was a given right then, but I returned the silent communication with a slight glare. There was a lingering pause.

Finally she sighed, "We need to leave." She knew that wasn't enough for me.

I clenched my fists as I finished sliding my coat on, "Yeah no shit, but to fucking where?" I sounded angrier than I was. In truth it was just misinterpreted frustration.

She turned from me and just stared out the window. I knew her, and when she was having a hard time maintaining eye contact, it was because she needed to do something she knew I wouldn't like. There was this terrible sinking feeling in my chest that I got whenever I felt like something bad was going to happen. It hadn't been wrong yet.

Hank came back into the room but I didn't even glance at him, instead making sure Red felt the holes I was boring into her with my eyes. He just tried to catch his breath, not saying a word. I noticed then for the first time that she had her pack on. It seemed extra bulky. The sinking feeling got more intense.

Finally, she cleared her throat slightly before muttering, "Outside the walls." She tucked her pistol into her belt loop and grasped the windowsill with white knuckles.

That was worse than I ever could've anticipated. My mind wouldn't process, almost _couldn't_ process, and I looked between she and Hank over and over, waiting for one of them to say something else, _anything_ else. Just to reassure me. But nothing was said. Hank avoided eye contact even more desperately than Red did.

"Outside the-" I scoffed at her, "-Outside the walls. _Outside_ the _walls?_ " She closed her eyes, as if preparing and accepting the barrage of rhetorical questions I was about to pelt her with, "What the _fuck_ \- I- we- _what?_ " My head started to pound and my breathing quickened. I couldn't deal with this. I couldn't go out there – I wasn't like Red. She was right in some aspects. I couldn't handle going outside, _willingly_ going back into that hellhole. But was this willingly? Did I have a choice?

Hank suddenly just sighed in impatience at me, "There's no time for this, Sunshine, we've gotta split." He tossed something at me which I also barely managed to catch, realizing on contact that it was my own backpack. Red must've retrieved it. I didn't have coherent enough thoughts at that moment to question what was in it.

Red exhaled, as if returning to reality, and turned to face Hank. Right when she opened her mouth to say something, my front door was slammed against again. It was even louder than the previous times and it made all of us jump in nearly comical unison.

" _Shit."_ Red breathed out, turning back to the window and gesturing frantically at it. Hank moved forward immediately, got onto the sill and dove straight out. My stomach once again suddenly formed a close relationship with my shoes as it dropped like deadweight. I didn't move an inch. She looked at me oddly, "Colleen, get goin', _seriously."_ She had to speak a little loudly to even be audible over the rhythmic pounding that was still going on.

I stared at her like she was insane, but at that moment it more felt like I was. Maybe I was dreaming. If I was, this was a fucking nightmare, "We're on the fucking second floor, Red, are you for real?!" Her answer was shown clearly on her face, I just was in really thick denial.

" _Yes._ There's grass down there, just land on your feet and roll. _Now_." Without any further discussion on the matter, she literally grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me to the window. I still held my pack limply in my hands and she sighed in mild irritation as she had to put it on for me – I was in that much of a dysfunctional stupor. Moving behind me she shoved my back a little too hard, sending me forward and making my stomach have abrupt, direct contact with the sill. The wind was almost knocked out of me but it snapped me out of it a bit, like she knew it would.

This was ridiculous. Probably the craziest thing I had ever done in my life. Looking down, it did that thing that happens in movies, when the length of the fall like extends and everything around it is blurry. I never thought that actually happened, but there it was. My head started to spin.

It was then that I heard my door literally being _broken,_ the sound of the shitty wood splintering unmistakeable. I vaguely heard Red inhale sharply, and that finally was enough to get me to move. Ignoring every single nerve in my body since all of them were _screaming_ at me not to do this, I vaulted myself over the sill and was sent hurtling through the air. It all went way too fast. I hadn't really processed what Red had said, something about feet and rolling. I landed with my knees sort of bent and the momentum when I made contact with the ground sent me tumbling forward, unintentionally somersaulting and then crumbling into a heap of curses that hissed through my teeth.

I was hurt in some way, I was sure of it, but at that moment my primary concern was Red. My body was numb from adrenaline anyway. Moving so that I was on my back, I looked towards the window to my room. There were a few gunshots and my breath got caught in my tightening throat. Right when panic started to settle in, I saw her dive out, landing gracefully and rolling into the fall with ease. As expected. It was so fucking dark out here, there was no way whoever was in my apartment would be able to see us. I could barely see her and she was only like three feet from me.

She was already on her feet before I could even let myself understand that she was safe, at least for now. I hadn't noticed but Hank was behind me, also without so much as a scratch. At least Red was sort of out of breath. I, on the other hand, could barely breathe at all. She looked down at me and extended her hand, which I took, and she pulled me to my feet. I swayed where I stood and she gently grasped my arms for support, the first not rough physical contact we had since she woke me up.

I could vaguely hear the people in my room shouting commands at one another. It was from those that I realized they were soldiers. What the fuck?! Had Red just shot at soldiers?! How deep was this shit we were in? Well, now we sort of had to go outside the walls, or we'd be executed for sure. Jesus Christ was this really happening?

Red looked at me, saw the expression on my face, and knew what I had just discovered, "Colleen," My eyes were glued to the window for some reason. It kind of felt like I was going into shock, or at least some weird catatonic state, "Hey, Colleen, c'mon," She shook me slightly but I wouldn't budge. It was only when her hands grabbed the sides of my face and she literally turned my head to look at her that our gazes met, "Get it together." She let me go, "Just focus on me. Alright? Eyes - here." She pointed at her own, and I just nodded shakily, doing as she said.

She hovered for a few seconds to make sure I was more aware of things before Hank seemed to get fed up, "Alright you two, enough with this shit, we gotta fuckin' _go._ " Hank had a thick Bostonian accent, and hearing it for some reason made a pang of sadness shoot through my chest. It made me remember what Boston used to be like, before everything went to shit. I mean, people still had the accents, I don't know why this affected me so much, it just really took me back.

Red exhaled heavily, "Hank's right, it's not rocket science where we went. We should move." Her eyes moved from mine and went to him, "Where's Twitch?" She reached into a small pack on her hip and tugged out some loose bullets, reloading her gun. I watched her every move really closely, like if I didn't I would just drift off again.

Hank wiped some sweat from his brow with his baggy sleeve, "By the restaurant tunnel, or he should be, as long as he didn't fuck anything up." I tried desperately to understand what was going on.

Restaurant tunnel? The only restaurant I could think of that was in the boundaries of the Q.Z was obviously not in use anymore, it was all boarded up like most buildings there. I was assuming that they were talking about a tunnel like the ones Red and I took to get to our spot. Sometimes when we were headed out, I would notice little branching paths that led to who knows where. Probably other entrances. Honestly I have no idea how the tunnels got there, maybe just loose earth eroding from the bombings. Some were basements, which made sense, some were sewage things, which were gross as hell but useful, then there were the weird ones in between that are hard to describe. Thankfully, the restaurant was nearby my apartment building. I let myself exhale at the realization.

Red smiled bitterly to herself, "Well this is Twitch we're talkin' about so lets not get our hopes up."

As I returned slowly but surely back to being fully aware, I noticed the familiar yet foreign feeling of my pack slung on my shoulders. I shifted slightly from foot to foot, judging its weight, wondering what Red had put in it. Probably the bare essentials that she managed to scrounge up as fast as possible. That was when my heart leapt into my throat.

"Red," My voice was fast, nearly spastic. She looked at me immediately, probably thinking I wouldn't have spoken for a good while. When she saw the devastated, panicked look on my face, her brow crinkled in worry, "Red, we're leaving, what if- what about my- the apartment- it's still-" I could barely form words, let alone a coherent sentence. Before I could start hyperventilating, she put her hands firmly on my shoulders, making me stop.

"I got it." She muttered softly. The gentle tone to her voice calmed me instantly. That was all that needed to be said. My body untensed slightly, and she felt it, promptly releasing me and turning her attention back to Hank, who looked on with mild impatience. I just kept my eyes on her, like she said. It kept me grounded.

Without another word, the two of them started walking. Fast. Caught off guard a bit by the sudden movement, I had to jog slightly to keep up with them. Red briefly glanced over her shoulder to make sure I was alright, but went right back to the task at hand once she checked. We cut through an alleyway behind the decrepit old post office, going swiftly but quietly as well.

They both froze suddenly at the sound of a car engine. There was a dumpster to our right, and they moved behind it, Red pulling me along with her. It was one of the soldiers' big armored trucks, making its rounds, spotlight and all. It shone down the alley but we were out of its path now. Those things had mounted guns, if it had seen us, we would've been fucking Swiss cheese. I felt myself starting to break into a cold sweat.

They waited a few more seconds for good measure before Hank nodded, getting to his feet again. Red and I followed suit. My gun was in the pocket of my coat, I realized, which was an extremely unsafe place for it. When I took it out, though, my hands shook so much it was probably even more dangerous for me to hold it. Blinking twice, I just tucked it into my belt loop.

And the next second, we were moving again. Jogging steadily now. The restaurant was just across the street – I could see it. It used to be a diner. I had actually been there once or twice. It was called, like, _Charlie's_ or something, and it was all 50's themed. Complete with checkered floors, red upholstered booths, and sometimes the waitresses would even wear skates. Now it just sat there, windows boarded up, planks partially covering the now dimmed out neon signs. The bright colors that had been on the outside had faded as well.

Hank poked his head out cautiously, looked both ways, and gestured that it was clear. As quietly as possible, the three of us ran across the road before slinking straight into the reassuring seclusion of another alley. This one was filled with all types of junk: brimming to the top trash cans, weird parts of unidentifiable machinery, broken bottles, and discarded furniture to name a few. I tried really hard to make myself relax, at least slightly, but it just wasn't happening.

Red groaned in frustration, proceeding forward, looking to her left and right, "Where the _hell_ is that scrawny little bastard?" She asked at a low tone.

There was a rustling from a pile of garbage bags to my left and it made me jump, almost yelping like a scared little girl but managing to keep it back. Some dude stood up out of it, smelling rather... ripe. His clothes were torn all to hell and his face was so covered in dirt I could barely see his eyes. He looked like one of the guys that made his home in that part of the Q.Z Red warded me away from.

Brushing himself off, as if that would make him cleaner, he looked between Hank and Red and asked in a scratchy voice, "Who you callin' scrawny?" He was rather small in stature, but his clothes were thick and baggy. He reminded me of a kid that finds his dad's suits when he's like, eight, and tries them on for fun. His sleeves stretched past the length of his arms and he tied the ends of his pants up higher on his legs with wire, presumably so he wouldn't trip over them.

Red stepped forward, "You, string bean, now come the fuck on, we don't have time for this," She, Hank and the new guy all walked towards what seemed to be a normal pile of trash. But when they parted it aside, it revealed an abnormally small bulkhead.

I assumed that garbage bag man was Twitch, and after observing him for a little while I realized that must've been accurate. Some part of the guy spasmed every two seconds, whether it was his eye, his head, his hand or his shoulder, he was almost constantly moving.

I got confused when nobody moved for about five seconds straight, and I slowly approached them right as Hank seemed to get fed up, "Open the goddamn thing already!" He could really be intimidating when he wanted. The guy was sizable, at least three times bigger than Twitch was. And you could tell by the scars scattered across his face that he wasn't afraid to make things physical if necessary.

Twitch jumped slightly where he stood, "Right, right, sorry," I watched as he got to his knees, and his gaunt form bent over the metal barrier. I could hear the fiddling of what I assumed was a lock. So Twitch was the only one who could open this bulkhead? This probably led into the basement of whatever building this was, and there would most likely be a tunnel down there to get us out. My body tensed in anticipation.

 _Snap!_

The sound made all four of us freeze. Something had just broken. Twitch spasmed again before letting out a slow, nervous chuckle, turning to face Red and Hank with a broken lockpick in his small hands. My eyes widened.

The next thing I knew, Red had this guy by the front of his shirt and had slammed him brutally against the wall, making him gasp for breath. He was shorter than her, and she pulled upwards so that his collar choked him ever so slightly. The look on her face made it seem like she was about to swallow him whole. I had never seen her so angry.

Baring her teeth, she moved so she was almost nose to nose with him, "We had a _deal._ " Her voice was little more than just a predatorial growl. The color drained straight out of Twitch's face. Hank just crossed his arms and watched.

He held up his hands in futile surrender, "H-Hey now, lets not do a-anything crazy-" His words were cut off when Red punched him square in the gut. He sputtered, clutching at his stomach. I was startled by this. She was being so vicious.

"I held up my end of the bargain, you dirty _weasel_ ," She pressed him harder against the wall and he winced, "Now you've gotta hold up yours, and _fuckin'_ open this thing." With that, she tossed him harshly back onto the pavement, his cheek scraping against it.

I stared as he sat up, hissing through his teeth, face bleeding. He said nothing though, instead just staring at the three of us. The way Red had thrown him, he had skidded and stopped a fair distance away. His eyes flitted between Hank and his assailant, body twitching even more than usual. Nobody moved.

Then we heard it. The all-too-familiar, heavy, rhythmic footsteps of oncoming soldiers. Shit. The three of us turned around, the sound coming from that direction. They were probably heading this way, or at least they would be soon. _Fuck_. When we looked back toward the bulkhead, my heart sank. Twitch had taken off. The anger that emanated off of Red was palpable, but she was smart. She knew that now wasn't the time to chase down some lowlife. No, we needed to get past this bulkhead, and fast.

" _Fuck_ me," She cursed, looking frantically around for some kind of solution. Confusing me, she quickly reached and picked up a glass bottle, then turned to Hank, "Figure it out. Whatever it takes, just get that goddamn thing open. _Quick_."

I had never felt more useless in my entire life as I just stood there dumbly, not having spoken a word. Red quickly moved to the end of the alley, back the way we had come, sticking skillfully to the shadows. Looking out cautiously, she took what I assumed was careful aim, and threw the bottle far. It landed somewhere in the distance, shattering loudly. That would distract the soldiers. Jesus she was smart. Sure enough, the footsteps moved that way. It wouldn't last long, and we knew that, but it was something.

I looked back to Hank to see that he had resorted to grabbing the handles of the doors and just tugging on them with all his might. He was strong. If he couldn't make them budge, nobody at our disposal could. The metal scraped and groaned, and it did visibly move a bit, but not enough. Red rushed back to us, assessing the situation and not liking how things were playing out.

"Hank unless you're the fucking Hulk that isn't gonna do shit." Her voice was shaking slightly. For once, the fear was showing through, when it should have ages ago. I kept my eyes on her and it steadied me. I just wished I had a way to steady her.

He grunted, face red from the effort he was exerting, before releasing his death grip and letting himself breathe, "I can open this. It's loose, flimsy. Old as hell..." His eyes lit up for a second and I knew he had an idea. My spirits temporarily lifted, but when he looked at Red and said, "Get ready to hate me," they lowered again.

Before she could even open her mouth to question that, Hank had literally jumped and landed flat on the bulkhead. It dented. He was pretty hefty, I would guess a little over 200 pounds, and those doors were weak like he said. Now, this idea was fine in retrospect, but the sound that his jump made was nearly deafening. If the soldiers ran to investigate a fucking bottle breaking, this would be like drawing moths to a flame. Great.

Red's eyes widened so much I was worried they would roll out of her head. She stammered some things out, trying to figure out what to say, before she finally just groaned in frustration and took out her gun, pointing it at the alley's entrance. Hank continued to jump, over and over, the sound making my ears start to ring. We could all hear the soldiers getting closer, shouting things to one another. Red didn't let it faze her. I felt my admiration for this woman swelling tangibly in my chest. I reached for my pistol too, drawing and aiming along with her.

The first guy rounded the corner and he was down before he could even blink, a bullet hitting him right between the eyes, courtesy of the redhead to my right. The soldiers exclaimed army command stuff, caught off guard but moving faster now. Two came in sight next and raised their guns slightly at us, but we had already pumped a series of iron straight into their chests. Truth be told, I had only killed one or two non-infected humans in my time. This was slightly jarring, but I reminded myself that it was them or me. Them or Red.

The next batch came and we downed them just like the rest. It was then that I ran out of ammo. In my adrenalin rush I had sort of forgotten that bullets were even a thing. I cursed at the familiar click of an empty gun right as more soldiers came in sight. Red downed one, then ran dry as well. Cursing, she noticed one of the approaching guys aiming straight at me, and she dove – pulling me down to the pavement with her. We landed in a heap, thankfully behind a dumpster, bullets pummeling the opposite side of it. Hank's antics had sort of become ambiance in the background of the combat, but it was right then that we heard a different sound. Hinges moving. He had done it. The doors were open.

 _Move._ I reminded myself in my head. Hank was already down there, and he shouted something up at us that I don't remember, being too disoriented from this entire overwhelming situation. Red sat up and grasped me by the shirt, tugging me with her, gesturing frantically to the now open escape route. I scrambled inside and was startled to fall a fair distance, landing roughly on my side with an "oomph". Well that hurt. But I ignored it, getting to my feet and out of the way while Red landed, unsurprisingly, standing up.

The soldiers were right on our asses, we needed to _go_. Locking eyes with her once more, I felt just a little bit more capable. If she could do this, the least I could do was try my hardest. Hank shouted at us from somewhere else in this basement we had landed in, and we both took off running.

I just followed her. It seemed like she knew where she was going. Hank was somewhere up ahead, I kept catching glimpses of him right as he would turn a corner. We were moving like we had trained for this, when in actuality, I was doing everything off pure instinct. Vaulting over collapsed structural beams, squeezing through more narrow passages, avoiding jutted out pieces of debris, climbing up makeshift staircases of rubble and junk, and just sprinting as fast as possible. I could hear my heart in my ears as my breaths were quick, shallow. Red was faster than me though, no matter how hard I pushed myself. It was like she was on autopilot, survival kicking in, taking control.

The entire time, we could hear the soldiers behind us. Closing in. Whenever we needed to stop, just for a second to reassess something or change directions, they got even closer. Their hasty commands would echo audibly and make my blood turn to ice when I heard them. "Get them", "Cut them off", "Split up". Shit. I kept expecting to just run straight into the arms of one, or to suddenly get shot in the back.

Our surroundings were starting to seem familiar. When previously I had absolutely no idea where the fuck we were, now I was starting to notice similarities to the route Red and I took to get outside. My suspicions were confirmed when I spotted the sole ladder that we climbed every trip. It was unmistakeable. I saw Hank already at the top, and Red ascended three rungs at a time. I followed suit to the best of my ability. Half-way there, I guess she thought I was going too slow, because she reached down, grabbed me by my forearms, and hauled me up the rest of the way.

We were close now. Hank was already moving the fateful wooden palette out of the way, securing our exit. Red let go and turned around, running again. Still barely unable to fathom what was going on, I just trailed after her. It was then that we heard it.

"Up there! I found 'em!" A voice called out from behind us. _Fuck._

Glancing over my shoulder slightly as I kept on going, I didn't see anyone but could hear people climbing the ladder. Fast. Right as I brought my attention back in front of me, my face slammed full force into a partially collapsed beam. Staggering, I fell backwards hard. Vision blurred and patchy, I almost couldn't recognize Red leaning over me.

"Watch your head." She whispered under her breath before dragging me out of the building by my ankles. I could tell I was outside, the air I breathed in feeling drastically different. Cleaner, "Hank, now!" I heard her say, though my line of sight was strictly aimed upwards at the crumbling ceiling. Still unable to see, I heard what I recognized as a grenade pin being pulled. Where the fuck did he get a grenade?

I expected an explosion and was surprised when instead there was a dragged out hissing sound. It was some type of gas. There was a huge commotion as the soldiers erupted in confusion, shouting things and swearing at one another. I wished I could see. Instead, I felt myself being lifted up into burly arms and carried.

"The fuck happened to her?" Hank asked. He was the one that picked me up. I had assumed so. Red was fairly strong for her size but not that strong. We were moving, running still, our destination completely unknown to me and possibly them.

I could basically hear Red roll her eyes, "She's just an idiot." With that, I found myself steadily passing out. Right as I completely lost consciousness, I felt her gently tuck some of my hair behind my ear.


	4. Map It Out

I woke up with a start, inhaling sharply, shooting into an upright position way too fast. My head throbbed painfully and I grimaced, hand moving to it on instinct. Everything was still sort of blurry and distorted, so I blinked a few hard times to make things more clear.

"Whoa, whoa, cowboy, ease up..." A familiar, comforting voice said from my left. I turned to look, movements still quick and defensive, but I immediately recognized Red and calmed down on sight. She smiled weakly at me.

As my breathing regulated I let my body relax, leaning backwards, supporting myself with my elbows, "Who're you calling cowboy, hick?" I asked, my voice slow and drawn out. Speaking made my lips move, duh, and a jolt of pain was sent through my top one, "Ow, _shit._ " When my hand went to touch it, she reached forward to grasp my wrist, preventing the movement.

I raised an eyebrow at her, "D'you remember hitting that beam? Knocked your head pretty damn good." Releasing her grip on me, her hand moved to my hair, which she ruffled slightly, "Jesus you're so fuckin' stupid." The small little smile hadn't left her face.

I did remember, vaguely. The memory was sort of just a brief image of really close up wood, then black splotches and rubble. And pain. It seriously hurt. I slapped her hand away, pouting, before sitting up completely with a sigh, "Go fuck yourself." I could vaguely hear the crackling of a fire nearby. We were outside. In the woods. God it had been a long time since I'd been in the woods. Too long.

She laughed lightly, "Anyway, I think you managed to snag a nail or somethin' with your lip cuz you tore it open real bad." Her hair was down again. She only had her hair down when she felt like we were relatively safe. That reassured me more than anything else could've at that moment.

I glared slightly - not necessarily mad at her, just at the situation - and her smile broadened. It was good to see her smile. Sometimes she would go days without so much as smirking, but now wasn't really a happy situation in my eyes, "The fuck are you so smiley about?" Talking still sort of hurt, but I could deal.

Something softened behind her gaze and it made my chest feel lighter. She rested her head on her hand, sitting cross-legged, "It's just..." She took a deep breath, like she was considering her words, "...It's good to see you're okay."

My stomach fluttered slightly at her sudden sentiment. Usually it was me that got occasionally sappy if I had too much to drink, or the rare few times when I let something slip while I was sober. Never her. I returned her smile instantly, then realized how odd this must've seemed. After everything that had just happened – running from soldiers, getting shot at, murdering people, abandoning our previous lives – we were sitting together and grinning like idiots. Only she had the ability to do this, to take me away from the real world for a few, cherishable seconds and to make me forget how awful everything was. I could never properly express my gratitude for that.

Red was the first to snap out of it by breaking our eye contact, "Right, so," She slid her pack off her shoulders and set it at her side, "You probably have a billion and three questions to ask me, and now's the time." She sighed in anticipation, "I'm probably gonna regret this, but go ahead. Shoot."

Turning my body to completely face her, my mouth opened while my brain sorted through the billion and _four_ questions I had, arranging them in order of importance. The first thing that came out was a gentle, slow, "Were you hurt at all?"

Our eyes met. She looked startled, expecting me to have been mad at her, infuriated with the fact we were now in ten times more danger than we were inside the Q.Z, but if I did feel that way the emotions had yet to surface. Her lips parted but nothing left them. Instead, she simply shook her head back and forth. Only once, in an almost sheepish way.

Okay, now for the questions she would've anticipated, "Why the _hell_ were soldiers after you?" For the first time I took note of the small firepit that had been hastily made behind her. The flames were in just the right position to illuminate her hair slightly, sort of making it look like fire itself.

She paused, looking almost embarrassed, "Well, y'know how I sorta missed that deal cuz I was late?" I nodded, extremely interested in what was being said, "Hank showed up to your place in the middle of the night, poundin' on your door, being real loud. You didn't even stir, you sleep like a fucking rock sometimes." I shot her a slight glare and she shrugged a bit, "Anyway, he came there to say the deal was still on, despite that I was like, six hours off schedule, and he hauled my ass over to the meeting spot. We were rushin' pretty bad and almost got caught on the way there, but made it without a hitch, surprisingly enough. The people I was there for weren't too happy 'bout my tardiness, though, and we got into a bit of a shouting match that was damn near close to getting physical, when soldiers overheard and broke it up. With shooting."

I felt like a little kid at night, begging for another story before they had to go to sleep, "Why did they shoot at you, though? Shouldn't you just have been arrested or whatever?" I tried to imagine Red in jail and vividly pictured her shivving some asshole in the yard. If the prisons even had yards.

"Well, yes, that would've been 'protocol'," She started to sound really pissed off and it intrigued me even more, "But one of guys I was smugglin' for was apparently a fugitive or something, and the dumbass opened fire on the G.I. Joe's as soon as he saw 'em. Hank and I tried to get out of there but they were already tailing us."

Okay, it wasn't entirely her fault. That was refreshing. Just proved to me how dangerous smuggling was, though, and how bad things could go from one fuck up, "Alright, so... deal gone bad, stupid asshole decided shooting at soldiers was a good idea, and you got caught in the middle." She nodded. I took a deep breath, sort of already knowing the answer to my next question but feeling like it needed to be asked, "...There's no way we can go back, is there?" Our eye contact broke on my behalf as I stared down at the grass we sat on. It was dying.

Nothing was said for a while. Maybe she was thinking. Either of a lie, or some way to make her response reassuring. If the latter was her goal, it failed miserably, "No. They'd kill us." Her words were like a slap in the face even though I anticipated them.

"Great." Was all I could bring myself to say. My shoulders sagged, and I took this time to actually examine our environment. We were in the woods, I had been right. Tall trees surrounded us on all sides, their leaves varying colors from fall. I think we were towards the edge, though, because the vegetation was thinning out a bit to our right.

It was nighttime. I could hear crickets. Jesus, how long had it been since I'd heard crickets? I had almost forgotten they existed, having grown so accustomed to the night ambiance of the Q.Z, which consisted of the soldier trucks passing by like clockwork, occasional announcements from that annoying lady on the loudspeaker, or arguments of the drunken dudes that lived underneath me. This was a pleasant change to say the least.

Something occurred to me then, and my eyes returned to Red, who hadn't looked away as I conducted my little survey, "Where's Hank?"

She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb, "He went off to go hunting. I tried to tell him that he wasn't going to get anything with just a knife, and that he wasn't shootin' his damn gun out here to draw all the infected straight over, but he had to go be all manly." She laughed slightly, "Said I'd give him my gloves if he brought anything back. Bastard better not, I like my gloves."

I raised an eyebrow at her, "Then why'd you offer them?" Sometimes her stubbornness and pride got her into some bad situations. No matter how deep the shit was that she got in, I always found myself slightly amused to see her not in control for once.

"Why not?" She said. Those words seemed empty, meaningless, but I sensed something behind them. It wasn't some petty little impulsive thing, she literally didn't see what the point was anymore. She wasn't smiling now. My brow furrowed.

I detected what she was truly trying to get across, but by the way she avoided eye contact, I had a creeping feeling she didn't want me to point it out. So I didn't. In fact, I dropped the subject altogether, "Where do we go now? Are we just gonna wander, or what?" Whatever lightness my tone had gradually adopted had just dropped straight out all at once.

Red stood up, walked to the other side of the campfire and picked up what I realized was my backpack. Bringing it back over and returning to her spot, she placed it on the ground in front of me. I grabbed it and clasped it tightly to my chest, watching as she unzipped her own, pulling out a worn, folded piece of paper. It was a map. She laid it out on the dirt between us.

The familiar outline of the Bay State was printed faintly on this well-used parchment. It was marked all over with pencil, some things I could understand like; _Abandoned, Spores,_ or big X's drawn over roadways. Other stuff was completely obscure to me, like strange little symbols or whole quadrants that were scribbled out. One thing that I noticed was that the handwriting seemed different all throughout. Also, none of it reminded me of Red's.

"Whose is this?" I asked, wondering why I'd never seen this before. It was pretty interesting, and I got the impression she'd had it for a long time.

She spoke as she rummaged through her pack for something, "Jack's." She glanced at me and noted my look of confusion, "That guy who lived in the sketchy part, y'know, the one that would step on the heels of your shoes when you walked so you'd trip."

"Oh dude fuck that guy..." I mumbled under my breath, remembering him distinctly just from that brief description, "It's called flat-tiring, by the way."

Her eyes moved to me, "That's dumb."

I scoffed at her, "You're dumb."

A faint smile came to her face as she pulled a stubby pencil from her bag, "And you're nine." I decided to let that one slide, being too interested in this mysterious map. She reached down and pointed to a small green shaded area, "We're here, right?" I nodded, a little apprehensive, having always sucked with maps when they _didn't_ have a bunch of shit scribbled all over them, "And we're trying to get-" She moved her pencil an awfully long way to the west, then proceeded to circle a sizable area, "-Here."

I stopped her, "Wait, why there? What's over there?" I found myself scanning over every inch of this thing, like if I didn't memorize it in three seconds I'd never get to see it again. There were so many symbols and roads and highways, it all sort of started to mix together until all I could see was a mass of lines that made my head hurt. Blinking hard, I returned my gaze to her expectantly.

She tapped her pencil against the bridge of her nose, "Somewhere in that area there's a place we can go." She looked so business-like, it was odd.

"What is it, a Q.Z?" I fiddled mindlessly with the straps of my backpack, tending to find comfort in any sort of familiarity. Most times.

Her head shook back and forth, "It's apparently a survivor settlement that they just made themselves. One of the more hardcore smugglers I work with would take stuff from me and bring it all the way out there. I see him like once a year, but he keeps comin' back, like clockwork. So he's still alive, which is saying something on its own."

I waited for her to elaborate, but she didn't. There seemed to be a lot of potentially hazardous holes in this destination plan, "Red, how many stories have we heard of the smaller places getting wiped out within, like, days? You aren't stupid, think about this."

"I have." Her response was immediate, so much so that it rattled me, "He just came and got his package two weeks ago. Had some free time, so he chatted with me for a bit before leavin'. He said that things are good there. Stable. They've got schools where they teach the kids, jobs for people, they're even bringing back regular currency. All that stuff we've dreamt about and missed is just waiting over there. That guy is no bullshitter. I can smell those from a mile away, and he was dead fuckin' serious, Colleen." She had made eye contact with me again to further her point. It worked.

Taking a deep breath, I consciously flattened my lips to prevent an oncoming frown, "Alright. But you only know it's in this area?" I pointed to what she had circled, focusing on the map with my eyes but not actually reading any of it.

"He wasn't too helpful. Just said it was out west, to the north but still in Massachusetts. Really near the border into New Hampshire." She sighed, sounding tired, and I wondered if she had gotten any sleep. Then I wondered how long I had been out. It was still night, so it couldn't have been too long. Unless it had been an entire day. I stopped thinking about it, "I get tidbits of information from around the Q.Z, and from listening to soldiers, so I narrowed down the area. Jack gave me this, had everyone in sketchy-ville mark anything they knew on it. So now we have some - granted not very reliable - references on which ways are safe and which aren't."

I was pretty impressed, but it sounded like she had been planning for this ahead of time. Furrowing my brow at the thought, my shoulders tensed, "How come you had this map at all? Did you want to leave or something?"

She scoffed mildly, "Course I wanted to leave, that Q.Z was hell." When she glanced at me and saw my expression she added, "I mean, it was safer, sure, but the restrictions made me feel like a fucking prisoner. I don't need that. Nobody does, not now."

Opening my mouth to question her more, I stopped short. This conversation wasn't something I wanted to get into, so I just let it go and left it alone, "How long do you think it'll take to get there?"

She reached and folded the map back up, returning it to her pack along with the pencil, "If no shit happens, it shouldn't take much more than a week."

I let myself laugh at that, "And if shit _does_ happen?"

She anticipated my response, I could tell, "Week n' a half. Tops." She stood up again and moved to be closer to the fire, facing the flames with her back turned to me. Things were quiet for a while.

Feeling a slight, more mild version of that dreaded sinking feeling in my stomach, I spoke up almost too quietly for her to hear, "I'm holding you to that, Red."

I moved slightly and remembered I still held my bag. Setting it down I did my best to unzip it without making any noise. I just didn't want her to pry. She had gotten better, but we didn't need any kind of tension right now. Opening it, I looked around, seeing some clothes, bottled water, non-perishables, and...

... _Goddamn_ I could barely even look at it. That painfully familiar purple cover, the custom clasp on the side, and the _fucking_ cursive, swooping signature in that black inky pen, I couldn't...

Inhaling sharply, I squeezed the top of my pack shut, blocking it from view and closing my eyes so tight it almost hurt. _Fuck_ it was all coming back. Why did I keep it? Oh who the fuck was I kidding, it was all I had left. I hadn't opened the damn thing in years, I just needed to know it was there. This just _hurt,_ more than anything else I had ever experienced. I would rather run face-first into that wooden beam a thousand more times than relive... _it_ again.

 _Stop, stop, get it out of your head, keep it the fuck out._ I told myself over and over, the mental commands instinctive and automatic. I hugged the bag against my chest again, clutching it with white knuckles and rocking myself slightly back and forth. _Get it together, get it together, you've been through this a million times, it's over, let it go, don't think about h-_

"-Hank!" Red's voice brought me out of my thoughts and I silently thanked her, snapping out of the trance I had entered. Jesus, sometimes I stayed like that for hours. We couldn't do that then. Dropping my pack like it was on fire, I stood up and ran my fingers through my hair, feeling the wetness that had started to come to my eyes receding.

Hank had come back and was walking cockily towards us, bloody knife in one hand, small squirrel in the other. Well I'll be damned. He did catch something. Granted it was small and littered with stab wounds, but he caught something. Wanting to see the interaction that was about to ensue, I approached Red as he stood in front of her. He puffed his chest out and jutted his jaw, looking between the squirrel that he held by the tail and back to Red.

She stood, shoulders tense, lips pursed, looking about ready to explode from her frustration, before just letting out a dragging exhale, her entire body slumping in defeat, "Oh, fuck you."

He laughed, or a more appropriate word would be guffawed – his voice was so deep it felt like he shook the earth at our feet. I couldn't help but grin at that, amazed that I had just smiled after the emotional breakdown I almost had. A bittersweet smirk came to Red's face as well, "I believe you owe me something?" He asked, getting way too much enjoyment out of this, in my opinion.

Red groaned in irritation, shamefully walking to her pack, reaching in and tugging out her thick, black wool gloves. As she returned to the rightful victor of her wager, I felt genuinely bad for her. Then, surprising both Red and myself, Hank moved and grabbed only one of the gloves he was presented with, seeming satisfied.

When he saw our confusion, he just shrugged and said, "I never felt right takin' stuff from a lady." He shot Red a wink, "Or Red." His remark was met with a firm punch to the arm.

A smile was glued to her face at the sheer absurdity of this entire situation, "Who the fuck would only want one glove?"

The guy just chuckled once at her, lugging off his backpack that was three times larger than ours, and said plainly, "Better than nothin'." He slid his newly acquired prize onto his big hand, then held it up, requesting a high-five from his competitor.

He was met with Red also donning her half of the reward, raising it up, and flipping him off.


	5. Infected

"Claudia." I spoke, my voice echoing slightly down the eerily empty street we walked down. I vaulted over the hood of one of the many abandoned cars left to rust on the road. Sometimes they managed to form little barricades to block our path. It made me wonder if people had purposely pushed them like that as some type of desperate last-ditch effort in the early days of the outbreak.

"No." Red called out in front of me, being a fair distance ahead. Hank was taking up the rear, being pretty uncharacteristically quiet. I didn't think much of it, letting my mind wander comfortably.

"Um..." I held my pistol loosely in my hand, safety on (it was rarely off, I didn't trust myself), and I tossed it briefly from palm to palm in thought before realizing what I was doing and mentally slapping myself for being dumb, "Diane."

There was a faint screeching sound of metal against pavement as Red pushed aside some weird looking piece of machinery with her foot, "Nope."

My eyes roamed our surroundings as they often did when I zoned out, and I took note of all the little post-apocalyptic details: how there were just random blood splatters on a bunch of things, how almost every window was shattered, how bullet wholes littered various surfaces and shell casings were scattered around, et cetera. No matter how many times I saw that stuff it always made me feel weird, because those movies that had taken place in dystopian societies had actually been pretty accurate of how it looked. Never would've expected that.

"Bianca...?" Even I knew I was just grasping at straws now. This game had been going on for seven years, were there even any more straws to fucking grasp? I rolled my eyes to myself, awaiting the inevitable response.

She chuckled slightly, the sound vaguely resonating off of the empty buildings to our left and right, "C'mon, Colleen, step it up." Sometimes we did this for hours. I was starting to wonder if she just said no on instinct and didn't even listen to the name I asked.

Hank grumbled something under his breath before finally speaking in his boisterous, loud voice, "What the hell are you guys doin'? I've been tryin' to figure it out for like, half an hour." Looking at him briefly over my shoulder, I saw that he seemed pretty amused. Maybe Red and I's banter was amusing? I never really thought about it since nobody was around to hear.

Shifting the weight of my pack on my shoulders, I answered him, "I'm trying to guess this bitch's goddamn name, because she won't tell me otherwise. We've been doing this since I first met her. I swear I'm running out of things to guess."

There was a lapse in conversation that almost became awkward before Hank piped up cautiously, "What, ain't her name Red?" Her immediate response was a bordering on cheery laugh, one that made my chest feel lighter at the sound and a small smirk come to my face at this situation.

Clearing her throat she had to talk kind of loud for him to hear her, "Yeah, Hank, and my sister's name is fucking Purple."

Hank tried and failed to defend himself, "Well, Violet maybe, but Purple's not a name." My throat tightened and I almost stopped walking, smile sliding from my face like butter. I tried not to let it show through, but I was rattled. Thankfully Red didn't look back to see my abruptly changed disposition.

She feigned being impressed, slow clapping his intelligence, "Good job, what d'you want, a medal?"

"Maybe." He puffed out, sounding disappointed. I could basically hear Red roll her eyes, "So what's your real name then? How come you won't tell?" He acted like he was asking things I had never thought of before. Was he actually dumb or just oblivious?

I was steadily returning to normal as I consciously focused on the conversation, so as to pull myself out of unintentionally falling into a debilitating flashback. She shrugged, "I don't like it. Real names don't matter much nowadays, so who cares?"

Hank scoffed, "Well if I can just pick my name, how bout you both start callin' me uh...Gristle?" There was a pause, as if Red and I were both waiting and hoping for him to say that was a joke, but he spoke with utmost conviction

Red gave it a few more seconds, "...Seriously?"

"Yeah, y'know, cuz I'm tough." He didn't miss a beat.

Red literally stopped walking and I was still in a mild daze, so it startled me and I skidded on my heels. She turned to actually face Hank and I quickly changed my expression to a more normal one, instead of seeming all detached and weird. She didn't notice anything and I allowed myself to breathe at that realization.

"Yep, you're probably the toughest guy I know." Her words dripped with sarcasm, "I mean, remember that time you whispered an insult under your breath when a soldier walked by, and when you thought he heard you, you booked it down the street n' into an alley?" A smug little grin played across her features and it earned a genuine one from me as well.

Hank's face fell almost comically, "I dunno what you're talkin' about." He avoided eye contact like it was toxic.

Red laughed, "Oh _ho_ , well then-" She stopped still all of a sudden, her entire body tensing up visibly. It made me freeze too. Red had better instincts than me, and better senses. She could see things really far away, smell stuff I couldn't, and hear noises that took like ten extra minutes to be registered by me. I had learned to trust her gut more than she did.

Hank was dumb though and didn't catch on to the blatant clues Red was giving – that he should shut the hell up and listen, "You actually misinterpr-" I took the liberty of punching him hard in the arm so Red didn't have to exert the effort, and he managed to take that hint, clamping his mouth closed.

We just stood. Hovering, not moving, waiting for either Red to give us a command or to hear whatever she heard for ourselves. After a few long, dragging moments I was starting to get fed up, when I caught it too.

That steady _click click click_ sound was unmistakeable in this fucking world, and it made my blood turn instantaneously to pure ice. The color drained from my face and my instinct told me to take off running, but my fear held me to the spot. Red had yet to move. I didn't look away from her, just waiting to take my cue based on whatever she did next. Hank was miraculously staying quiet.

Finally, as the sound got closer and closer and as I felt my panic almost make me literally lose control of my bladder, Red locked eyes with me, then Hank, before gesturing frantically to a building at our left – the noises having come from our right. No further discussion being needed, we all crept there as quickly as possible without making much noise. The street didn't help us at all in that aspect, since it was scattered with shattered glass and stray tin cans just waiting to be kicked or stepped on.

Managing to get to the building, Red hauled herself up through a window a fair distance off the ground, slipping inside without so much as a peep. I followed suit with some difficulty, not having as much upper body strength as she did. When I landed safely indoors I took a few seconds to register where the fuck we actually were, and all I could manage to assume was that it used to be some kind of store. There were a ton of shelves everywhere, and although I sort of wanted to scavenge them for supplies this place looked pretty picked clean.

I could still hear it, though it was slightly more faint, that _click click click_ seemed to echo through my fucking skull and it sent chills shooting up and down my spine. Hank had yet to come inside and it confused us. The window was fairly small, maybe he was worried he couldn't fit? We couldn't see outside from where we were, so we moved to a nearby glass rotating door – stuck in an open position because of like, rust or something I dunno. That was unsettling, we were partially exposed here and there wasn't much we could do about it. My stomach flipped.

I had a miniature heart attack and almost screamed when Hank poked his head into view, though I held it back to a sharp gasp. He looked apologetic for a split second before that awful _click_ ing sounded again, making him freeze. Jesus it was close now. Red didn't move herself and just motioned frantically for him to come in. I was starting to wonder how much safer this place was than outside. He started to slink through the crack in the door but found that he was still too big. Shit. He grabbed and tried to pry it open further, which his strength allowed him to do, but it was a really dumb idea. Because that door squeaked and groaned so loudly we all knew we were screwed.

We didn't have time to pause and be scared like we wanted to, we couldn't afford to take even a breath. Hank dove inside with us right as we heard that panic-inducing, predatorial screech come from somewhere on the road.

 _Look around. Exits, where are the exits?_ I ran through the familiar you-need-to-get-the-fuck-out-fast thought process and rushed to the back of the store, trying to find something, anything. There was a door to a staff room or an office, but it was blocked off from the inside with debris. _Fuck_. Red and Hank were doing the same thing as I was, but the only clear way out was the rotating door, and none of us wanted to head back in that direction.

The clicking was so loud now it was almost deafening. It was basically inside, I knew that, and we were out of time to search. Now all we could do was hide and pray. Feeling myself start to actually sweat from terror, I dove behind the nearby counter and pressed myself against it, as if trying to just sink into the surface and disappear. I had lost track of Hank and Red in my panic, and if they were smart, I wouldn't be able to hear them either. Despite them most likely being in the vicinity, I felt so isolated it was unreal.

My body tensed up like a statue when the sound of the door reverberated off the walls, and I heard those chilling, uneven footsteps. _Click click click._ They weren't very graceful, so we could follow the path it made as it shuffled frantically throughout the area. It would find me if it came over here. I wasn't hidden well enough, and there was nowhere else to go. Nope, I needed to make a break for it. I just _so_ didn't want to. The reluctance was so powerful it felt like I was glued to my spot. God maybe Red was right, sometimes I seriously was a fucking coward.

 _Come on. Come on. You like your jugular vein where it is, right? Then fucking move._ I tried to psyche myself up but it really wasn't working. I looked around, wishing to just catch a glimpse of Red because her presence was the most reassuring thing in these types of situations, but she was nowhere in sight. I bit my lower lip, clenching my fists with white knuckles before finally daring to poke my head out cautiously-

-And to promptly be greeted by its fucking _face_ two inches from mine. I gasped, and it was audible, and it heard. Jesus Christ I had never been that close to one before. I doubted that anyone had, because if you got to this distance, you were usually dead in a few seconds flat. It was even more grotesque when you could really see all the details – its jagged, uneven, yellow teeth in its wide-open mouth, its grey skin splattered with terrifyingly fresh blood, and of course the fact that its entire head looked like a mushroom had exploded out of its skull (because it _had_ ).

Paralyzed by fear, I just stood there like a fucking sitting duck, and the clicker knew where I was now. Time seemed to be moving really slow for a little while, then it shrieked atN me, saliva from its gaping maw hitting my face and making me sneer, and I backed up on instinct – without looking. Being the idiot that I am, I tripped over something and fell (loudly), watching in terror as this thing vaulted the counter and was making a beeline straight towards me.

 _Fucking_ _move_ _._ My brain shouted at itself, and I finally snapped out of it. Scrambling to the side I crawled on my hands and knees, getting little pieces of glass from broken vending machines embedded into my palms in the process. I resisted the urge to hiss through my teeth and staggered to my feet, already running, moving as fast as I could to the door. I didn't look to see if it was on my tail, but its terrible _click_ ing had stopped. It sounded angry, if that even makes sense.

Right as I was about to reach the exit, I skidded to a stop on my heels. There were infected outside. They probably followed the clicker but weren't smart enough to come indoors. I was cornered. Looking over my shoulder I saw that it was coming towards me but had sort of lost track of where I was. Considering my options and realizing I had basically none, I moved to the side and pressed myself hard against one of the store shelves, not knowing what to do.

 _Click click click._ It was right next to me. I held my breath, willing myself to not so much as blink even though that wouldn't make noise, and I scooted around the shelf to the opposite side, making my steps light and looking at the floor. Now the clicker just seemed pissed off, because it knew someone was in here, it had just lost sight of them. My eyes shifted to the rotating door and I could see the Runners outside, walking with their jerky movements and spastic noises. They would see me if they looked over here. I edged further inward to be out of their line of sight.

I almost jumped straight out of my skin when I heard a loud series of clatters to my left. Okay, that wasn't me. Head whipping in that direction, I saw that a pile of cans had been knocked over. Hank. Shit. The clicker shrieked again, flocking to the noise, and I could also vaguely make out the sound of the infected outside closing in. They reacted to noise too. Jesus we couldn't handle them on top of this.

Hank finally came into view and we locked eyes. He held his revolver in his hand but I quickly shook my head back and forth, mouthing the words _too loud_. He nodded but gestured that he didn't have anything else. The clicker was getting too close for comfort and Hank, who sat on the floor, pressed his legs against himself to get as small as possible. I wasn't sure how well that would work out.

Reaching to my small Swiss army knife that I kept in my pocket at all times, I flipped out a blade and tried to mentally prepare myself for what I had to do next. I totally couldn't but it was worth a shot. Lowering myself into a crouch, I started to cautiously approach the monstrosity that just kept _click_ ing nonstop, frantically looking from its left to right, twitching oddly in that unsettling way. I was agonizingly slow, but that was necessary if I didn't want it to hear me. The thing was literally hovering _over_ Hank, looking everywhere except down. Its dripping saliva was landing in a pool on his knee and I could tell he _so_ wanted to wipe it away but was afraid of moving at all. He shot me a look that told me to hurry the fuck up, but this was as fast as I could go.

Then it was four feet away. Then three. Then two. Until finally, I got to my feet, readied my blade, and slammed it straight into the back of its head. The dying sound it emit made my blood run cold at just how loud it was. I watched as its disgusting body crumpled to the floor in a heap. My shoulders slumped but I knew we were far from safe. A flash of orange appeared in my peripheral vision and I looked towards it, finally seeing Red. A weight was lifted from me at the sight of her.

She looked from the fresh corpse on the floor to the knife I held tightly in my fist, seeming impressed. I didn't even register that at the moment, being way too alert to care about stuff like that. Hank stood as well, shaking his leg vigorously to rid his pants of the disgusting liquid. There was blood on my hand and I wiped it on my shirt.

"Can we please fucking _go_ now?" Hank whispered. When it echoed through the store, he shut right up. Red just nodded and gestured to the window we had entered through. I mentally kicked myself over and over for not having thought of that at all. He seemed dismayed, though, "Nah, that's a lady window. I'm too big for it."

Red mumbled something under her breath, clearly getting fed up with him, "No _time_ for this Hank, there are fucking Runners headin' our way, now get your ass up there." She was right. I could hear them more clearly now. It seemed like they were having trouble with the rotating door, maybe it was too heavy for them? Either way, they were going to be inside with us in a matter of minutes. We needed to get _out._

"My ass won't fit!" He insisted. The window _was_ sort of small, but he hadn't even tried and there was no other way. Red and I glared at him in unison. It didn't faze him.

Her eyes moved to me and she just said, "Well we've got a job to do, then." I raised an eyebrow at her. The infected were pounding against the glass of the door with their full force and the sound made me almost panic, "You n' me are gonna have to go out there and draw them away so Hank can get out. Are you up for that?" At the sound of the door nearly shattering, I just nodded vigorously.

Hank didn't seem too pleased with this idea, but there wasn't anything else we could do since he refused to try the window. Red quickly climbed out and I followed suit after swapping my knife for my pistol. I had a pretty shit aim, but at close quarters I could figure it out.

We landed on the sidewalk and looked over to where the infected were. They were literally throwing themselves rabidly at the door, using their full weight to try and break it. It was incredibly odd it hadn't already given way, but I didn't question it. There were five of them. Oh Jesus. Red exhaled in preparation before raising her gun straight at them. We were pretty far away, and judging by the way I was shaking like a leaf, I didn't want to risk wasting bullets. She pulled the trigger right as they managed to finally bust through the glass, and although three of them were drawn to us, two entered the store.

Red's shot had hit one of them in the arm, which did nothing much except anger it. I hated the way that they ran, so viciously, like literal animals going after their prey. And they were so goddamn _fast._ I reminded myself that I was in mortal danger and I did my best to aim at one. They were so spastic that my first shot missed pathetically. Red had already downed one, but they were closing in by now. Shit.

Not trusting myself, I just shoved my pistol back into my belt loop and took my knife back out, readying it as they got dangerously close. It was two against two, and for some reason it was like they knew that, because one went after Red and one came for me. I heard gunshots and I wasn't worried about her, it was really me that was in the most danger here.

The Runner came at me, mouth already chomping on air in an unsettling way as it made those weird, guttural growls. I tried to take a stab at its head before it got too close but that was just not happening. Having lost the one chance I may have had to gain the advantage, it pounced on me. My heartbeat was audible in my ears. I kept its teeth from my neck by mere inches as I somehow managed to keep the bastard back with my forearm. It was flailing wildly, trying to claw at me, head twisting and turning to get a better angle for a bite. There was no way to maneuver so that I could get a chance to attack – if I faltered in any way I was done for. I just needed it off of me, just for a _second._

It was bigger in stature, but thankfully, my adrenaline made me stronger and I just barely shoved the thing away. Before it could get its bearings and charge me again, I was moving, and I slammed my blade straight through its forehead, my momentum causing me to tackle it to the ground. It emit that signature death gurgle that they always do, then went limp underneath me. My breaths came in shallow, short bursts, chest pounding.

Things weren't over yet. Looking up, I saw that Hank had yet to come out of the store, and I could hear a ruckus going on inside. He was fending off two of them on his own. I stood, ready to get in there to help, when I remembered Red. Where was she? I quickly turned around to see her pinned down by the infected that had come for her. Her gun had been knocked off to the side and she tried desperately to reach it with one hand, grabbing the thing's face to keep it off her with the other. Shit.

I ran towards them, knife ready, right as Red's grip suddenly faltered on its head. It closed in, teeth poised and ready to take a chunk out of her collar bone, but I was already there. Needing it off of her, I literally dove and grabbed it by the waist, collapsing in a heap with it a fair distance away. Unfortunately, I came out on the bottom, and the situation had just swapped Red for me. I had a knife though. When it tried to get a bite in, I just embedded the blade into its temple, and it collapsed, effectively knocking the wind out of me when the dead weight dropped on my body.

In a second or two, Red was at my side, and she kicked the carcass off of me as I tried to breathe, sputtering a bit. She helped me to my feet, looking both concerned and grateful. It was weird to think about, since this had only happened once or twice before, but I had just saved her life. Most likely. Either way, then wasn't the time – Hank still needed our help. As if reading my mind, she was already on her way. I felt like I wouldn't be of much use, considering the fact I could barely inhale, but I followed her to the best of my ability in a weird sort of half-jog.

She burst through the now shattered door, gun at the ready. I expected her to shoot or something, but instead she just let out a heavy sigh and let her shoulders untense, holstering her pistol. Curious, I entered as well, and was greeted by Hank, who was catching his breath as he stood next to two infected corpses. His shirt was splattered with a lot of blood and I couldn't tell if it was his or not. Despite the situation, all he did was look at us and briefly salute. Red doubled over, hands on her knees as she tried to get her bearings.

Jesus Christ I needed a nap or something. Fuck, we all did.


	6. Scraps

"Ahh shit." Hank mumbled under his breath again. It was almost hard to hear, getting drowned out by the rain hitting the ground. I shuddered, my hair sticking to my neck and my clothes to my skin, drenched. Red was soaked to the bone too, but pretended not to be bothered by it.

Hank just had to be manly, though, and insisted that he could make a fire despite the weather conditions. It was another bet between him and Red. This time, I was sure she would win, because it was coming down in buckets and he couldn't even get a spark. He had resorted to doing the thing where you rub sticks together, since his lighter wasn't doing shit. He sort of looked like a caveman, all hunched over, trying desperately to make something happen with two sticks and a pile of ripped up newspaper.

Red had gotten over being amused and was just getting annoyed at that point, "Hank, stop proving my point that you're an idiot and just come over here." She and I were huddling beneath an awning that just barely kept us out of the downpour. We were shoulder to shoulder, and Hank's big ass with us would probably push us into the rain. I like to think he knew that and was trying to be nice without showing it. That was a very Hank-like thing to do

He glared playfully at her before just putting up his hood as a sign of defiance. It didn't do much to keep him dry. I just rolled my eyes and felt myself shake violently again. Jesus Christ I was _freezing._ Red noticed and reached into her pack - which was nearly soaked through – tugging out a blanket. It was thin but it was something. She scooted closer to me and wrapped it around us both, but I couldn't stop trembling. She seemed steady enough. In fact, she was warmer. I pouted at the realization and she raised an eyebrow at me.

"It's cold." I muttered. I could basically hear her roll her eyes, though I didn't look. Instead of saying anything, in response, she simply put her arm around my shoulder and tugged me closer, so that she could share some of her warmth with me. So she caught my meaning.

Hank just kept going at it, even though the sun had just recently set. We were pretty safe in the small little area we had found – cars had been arranged around a particular store as a form of barricade and it was still effective. As long as we didn't make too much noise or draw any attention, we'd be fine. Besides, we hadn't seen an infected for days now. Nope, it had just been the three of us, literally no other signs of any type of life. It was oddly isolating, and I really wasn't sure how I felt about it. I rested my head on Red's shoulder.

Overall, we had been moving like this at a pretty steady pace for... eight days. So over a week. Red had said we'd reach our destination in a week and a half at most. So we were close. I never did ask, though I don't know why. I guess I just didn't want to seem like that kid on a road trip that keeps asking "are we there yet?" Hank wasn't asking so I decided I shouldn't either. We made good progress, only coming across a few things to block our path, like one of our ways being obstructed or something, but we always managed to figure it out and get back on track.

"Well, we're goin' to sleep." Red said after a while. Her accent was a bit thicker again. Sometimes, when she was really tired, that happened. It made me smile slightly, almost commenting, but for some reason keeping it back, "Try not to make too much noise while yer bein' stupid." With that, I felt her relax a bit – her guard lowering as she let herself drift off.

Just as I was about to join her and close my eyes, I took another glance at Hank and noticed something. He had stopped what he was doing once he realized Red wasn't watching him, and he just stared blankly at the meager kindling he had scrounged up, adopting an expression I had never once seen on his face. He didn't know I could see. He wouldn't have been letting this show through otherwise.

I watched with extreme interest as he reached and picked up a particular piece of newspaper, reading something on it that I obviously couldn't make out before crumpling it into a ball and tossing it over his shoulder. I was so damn curious I almost went over to retrieve it, but I stayed put. Hank always seemed so lighthearted. So boisterous and refreshingly foolhardy. The way he seemed then, though? It was the complete polar opposite.

I racked my brain for any sort of tidbits of info I had learned of Hank's past, even from in the Q.Z, anything. All that came up was his smuggling jobs and the fact he sold something I couldn't quite recall back in the sketchy section. It was only then that I thought back on little things he would say while we were walking around recently, stuff I sort of started to tune out after a while since it all tended to be irrelevant comments. It took a while, but when I really thought about it, one stood out.

It was early on in our trip, when we were still in those woods. It turned out to just be some nature reserve that I don't remember the name of, and Hank mentioned he had camped there before. He was talking to Red and I was behind the two of them, not paying much attention at all. I don't think she was either. But for some reason I can distinctly recall him saying that he had brought his "two boys" with him every summer.

Hank had sons. He had two sons, and I had never once seen them with him, I had never seen any slight trace of children in the little shack he used to call a home, and I had never heard him bring up anything even slightly regarding kids in the entire time I'd known him. It wasn't hard to put two and two together. In a fucked up world like this, where everyone had lost somebody at some point, the assumption of death was almost always accurate. Weird new rules of etiquette had been created from this apocalypse – rules about not mentioning certain things or knowing when to not ask questions. This was one of those times. My post-apocalyptic manners told me to keep my mouth shut, and I listened.

But Jesus, knowing this now, and looking at Hank's face, my heart tangibly sank. That poor guy. That poor, big oaf who seemed so oddly optimistic had actually lost so much. Maybe it was just a mask. Was he genuinely like that, or was he putting on a show? My head started to hurt when I thought about it too much. That newspaper clipping had probably said something about kids. Maybe an article about father's day. No matter the case, more than anything I wanted just get up, walk out into that torrential downpour, sit at his side and give him a hug. But I didn't. I didn't move a muscle. And I _so_ wish I had.


	7. Too Soon

_Bang!_

I was jolted rudely awake by the distant but loud sound of a gunshot. It was unmistakeable and it proposed an instant, familiar dilemma: Investigate or stay out of it? It had stopped raining, and seconds after I had heard it, Red was already standing with her pistol at the ready. Hank staggered to his feet, sleep weighting his movements as he drew his own gun. I just rolled up the blanket we had used the night before and shoved it into Red's pack before donning my own and getting up as well. We hovered for a few seconds, but nothing was heard. I slowly, quietly, handed Red her bag and she slung it onto her shoulders without a peep.

Then there was another. _Bang!_ We all jumped slightly, startled even though we were sort of expecting it, and our heads all whipped in the direction of the noise. It was coming from past the small cluster of buildings we were behind, and it was close. This one was different, though. Because directly after, there was a piercing scream that sent chills up and down my spine. It was shrill and high, definitely coming from a woman, but it was hard to tell if it was a child or an adult. Either way, that person was injured. No doubt about it. But none of us moved.

Hank looked the most startled by all of this, eyes wide and some color having drained out of his rugged face. He scratched nervously at his faint, scraggly beard, looking antsy and ready to move. Red's back was to me so I couldn't evaluate her expression, though I desperately wanted to.

I was startled again when Hank suddenly spoke, "C'mon!" He was already moving, heading straight for a nearby alley that would take us toward the gunshots.

Red caught his arm when he got in reach, but that barely even stopped him, "The fuck are you doing?" She asked, her voice low. Great, there were already two sides of this decision. Personally, I had no idea what to do. That was usually my stance on these sorts of things. Maybe we should help? If that was me that just got shot, I'd want someone to lend a hand, even if they were a total stranger. Then again, what if that person was dead? Then we'd just be putting ourselves into the line of fire. I hoped they didn't try to incorporate my opinion into what they were about to debate.

Hank shook himself out of her grasp, glaring, "Helping." He was walking again, not even slight hesitation in his words or movements. The determination was spontaneous and unexpected, but something pulled me after him so that he wouldn't get out of sight. Red didn't have a chance to keep him back a second time, so her only choice was to follow us. I heard her mumble a few things under her breath, probably thinking we were crazy or at least really stupid.

The alley let out into yet another abandoned, debris scattered street like all of the others. We emerged with moderate apprehension, looking around for any signs of combat, but we didn't see anything blatant from where we were. Hank only took three or four seconds to examine our surroundings before he headed straight down the road. Jesus, the only precautions he was taking was occasionally ducking behind a car. I just stuck near him, ready to help if things went sour. Red was at my side consistently, and she probably would've said something if she wasn't so focused on staying alert. We were potentially in grave danger, but what else was new?

After making it almost completely down this stretch of pavement, I nearly leapt straight out of my skin when Red grabbed my arm. Her grip was firm and it held me in place, though I shot her a questioning look she didn't address. Her eyes were fixated on something and her brow was furrowed. I followed her gaze and spotted what she did.

There was a literal pile of bodies, varying in states of decay, all of them in one general area. The freshest one seemed to be that of a young woman no older than her early twenties. From what I could see, all of them except a few were shot straight through the head. What disturbed me the most, though, was that all of them were human – not infected. My stomach flipped as I watched Hank heading straight for that, and instinctively I almost shouted at him to stop, but Red squeezed me so tightly it almost hurt and I stayed quiet.

Jesus Christ Hank was really dense sometimes. Watching him approach that mass grave without so much as a glance around for possible threats just reminded me of that aggravating trait. My own eyes were skimming around at the speed of light, assessing things, examining our surroundings, looking for any signs of the killer, but I saw nothing. We were in the center of a more urban area now, there were some taller half-built high-rises nearby that were depressingly short given their name. Unstable looking scaffolding was even propped against the sides of them. There were abandoned vehicles all over the various intersections, some tipped over, some with doors still open.

"He needs to move..." I whispered to Red, watching as Hank dumbly got closer and closer to the group of corpses. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears. If she wasn't holding me, I would have literally run to tackle him out of the way.

A brief flash of uncertainty showed on her face, "I know..." She was in charge here and I think she knew that. By default, she was always in charge. I didn't want to have that kind of responsibility and she was definitely the braver of the two of us, not to mention she was just more skilled than me in basically every aspect – at least the important ones. I just waited for her to direct me because at that moment I couldn't have been at more of a loss, "...Do you see anything?" That didn't seem like a genuine question, more like something she felt was obligatory.

"No." My answer was immediate. Hank had literally reached the body of the young woman, the one who had presumably screamed earlier. He was bending over to get a better look at her. God Red was right, he was an idiot. But he was an idiot I didn't want to get hurt.

Red pursed her lips, looking about ready to finally do something about this situation. When she opened her mouth to speak, to warn that moron of the danger he was in, my hand subconsciously moved and withdrew my knife. Guns weren't really my thing, since my hands tended to shake in any scenario where it'd be good to use them. My stomach was getting that sinking feeling – the one that made my blood run cold and let me know things were about to go south.

Before any audible fragment of a word could leave her, though, Hank spoke up. Actually, he shouted, calling back toward us, "Hey, I think it was this girl!" My mind could not fathom the depths of his stupidity at that moment, and when I looked and saw how stunned Red seemed, I knew the feeling was mutual. He didn't seem to notice, being too immersed in his short-sightedness, "It looks like she got shot right in-"

 _Bang!_ I couldn't keep in the literal yelp that left me when another gunshot sounded. The noise echoed through my skull as my mind ran at a million miles an hour, eyes scanning every surface, every nook and cranny, trying desperately to find the shooter. After a second or so of that, my gaze shot back to Hank, who had jumped back a bit from where he stood. Red let me go and had her gun aimed, at the ready, but there wasn't a clear target. Where the fuck _was_ this guy?

I was startled again when Red suddenly barked at him, _"Hank get the fuck down!"_ The command didn't seem to register, and he just stood there, stiff as a statue. I pressed myself hard against the cover Red and I were slightly tucked behind – a few stray trash cans on the sidewalk. These wouldn't provide much protection from bullets, especially if we didn't even know where the shots were coming from. He didn't seem injured, thank God, but in his current state he was the definition of a sitting duck.

 _Bang!_ Another one. This time, it was followed by a big, booming voice crying out an obscenity I don't remember. My blood turned to ice and I finally just stood straight up, not caring what Red would think. Hank's hand was now clutching his arm tightly, most likely shielding his new bullet wound that he was bound to have received. He was still in his weird stupor, though, and he seriously couldn't be anymore.

Vaulting over the cans that may or may not have kept me out of the line of fire, I rushed to him, grabbed the front of his coat with both hands, and forcibly tugged him into a thankfully nearby bus. Once actually inside, I shoved him to the floor and joined him shortly after, my breath only coming in shallow bursts as I tried to get my bearings. Another gunshot sounded and it hit the side of the vehicle, I could hear it make contact with the metal, but it didn't penetrate. Even though we were technically safe in there, my nerves were far from calmed.

Glancing at Hank, I saw that my actions had brought him back to reality, and he stared at me with a gratitude I hadn't ever seen on his face before. I didn't address it and instead got to my hands and knees, crawling towards the back of the bus. The emergency exit was there. I remembered from countless bus safety drills how that worked, so we had two potential escapes not including the windows.

Bullets continued to slam into the side of our temporary shelter – the one I was closest to, at least giving me a slight direction of where our shooter was. It was coming from over by those high-rises. A light bulb went off in my head when I put two and two together, posing an extremely feasible possibility: it was probably a sniper. Some guy taking advantage of the high terrain and the good vantage point. That's why all of those corpses had shots straight through the head. Looking back, I remembered they didn't visibly have any supplies on them except for the latest girl. The dude probably killed passers by and took their shit to survive on his own. Coward. I got a bad taste in my mouth at the thought.

For some reason he had missed Hank, though, twice. Well, not the second time, but he hadn't gotten the bulls-eye of Hank's actual head. I guess the asshole was having an off day or something, I dunno. Either way, I was thankful for it. And I assumed Hank was too.

Remembering Red abruptly, I moved toward the door we had entered through and looked outside. She was in the same spot and she locked eyes with me immediately before glaring. She had probably never expected me to take such action, that seriously wasn't my thing, and honestly it surprised me too. I shrugged slightly, then gestured for her to come over. When she signaled that there was somebody up high, I knew that my theory was at least kind of correct. Whoever was shooting at us was on those high-rises, treating us like a fucking game of whack-a-mole. What a piece of shit. He just kept pummeling the bus with relentless fire, but he would stop every now and then to reload. I just beckoned her over again. She was smart. I was sure she was taking note of his shooting patterns too.

Sure enough, when he took those few seconds to slap a new clip into his rifle, Red was moving – sprinting straight for us. She dove inside right as a bullet almost skimmed her foot. Her momentum sent her slamming unforgivingly into the side of the driver's seat and she winced at the contact, but she was safe. I let my shoulders sag ever so slightly. Being quiet was pointless at this stage, so we weren't afraid to talk.

After somewhat regaining an effective breathing pattern, her harsh gaze turned on Hank, who remained in the same spot I had tossed him, "You have _officially_ proven my point now, dumbass. You're the biggest idiot I fucking know." Her voice was ragged just like her inhales.

Hank lifted up his head, which looked like it took considerable effort, just so he could make eye contact with Red and shoot her a smirk before letting himself lay down again, "Aw shucks, cowgirl, you're making me blush."

I sighed heavily, "Oh shut up you two." Moving to be at Hank's side, I tried to get a better look at his arm, "How's that doing? And no tough guy bravado, seriously, are you good?" We sort of had to project our voices to be heard with all the bullets pelting the bus. Now that I thought about it, this idiot was just wasting ammo, which was one of the stupidest things someone could do nowadays.

Hank grunted a few times from effort as he pulled himself into a sitting position, "It's fine. Just a flesh wound. I got lucky. Guess that asshole's losing his touch, huh?" He withdrew his palm from his injury with mild caution and hissed slightly through his teeth. When I examined it closer I saw that he was basically right, or so it seemed. He was bleeding though, which we needed to fix.

Red scooted over to us, "I've got some bandages in my-"

Hank cut her off, "Nah, nah, sweetheart, don't waste those on me." He reached toward the end of his sleeve and ripped off a good chunk of fabric. It was then that I noticed he was wearing his singular glove. When I glanced toward Red, I saw she had hers on too. Hank was most definitely not a doctor in any sense of the word, but he wrapped the cloth tightly around his wound pretty well - it looked like it'd be effective in stopping the blood flow. I let myself calm down a little.

Red's breaths were starting to develop a normal, solid pattern, "Alrighty then, I guess that's fine..." She ducked her head to glance briefly out one of the bus's windows, toward the high-rises, and furrowed her brow, "...Fuck, we're tied down here guys. Even if we split up, he'd just single one of us out."

I groaned in frustration, "Well, shit, are we just gonna wait until he gets bored?" A knife wasn't much use against a sniper, so I just slid my blade back into my pocket with reluctance before getting my pistol out instead.

"I say we fuckin' kill him." Hank suggested firmly. I just sighed at what he said and shook my head back and forth to myself.

Red ran her palm down her face, "Yes, Hank, that'd be great if we could _fucking see the guy._ " She was starting to sound genuinely dismayed, and like she didn't want to put up with any of Hank's usual behaviors. This was probably the most life-threatening situation we had gotten into since that clicker encounter. We were getting rusty.

I dug one of my hands into my hair, "Could we try to sneak out once it gets dark or something?"

Red set her jaw, "I mean, I guess... but I'd rather not have to navigate a sniper's trainin' ground in the middle of the night." That was a valid point. I could vividly picture Hank knocking into something and making our presence known, effectively screwing us over.

I shifted around where I sat, starting to feel stir crazy and trapped, "We don't really have an abundance of options, here."

She traced her fingers idly along the barrel of her gun, looking very conflicted, "If we could just-" Her words stopped short and she froze all of a sudden. This time, I didn't have to wait to hear it too.

The sound of infected screaming and making all of their weird noises was pretty distinct. Shit. With all of the gunfire, they were drawn to us. We needed to move. Hank was already struggling to his feet, using a bus seat as support.

"Oh, hey, this isn't all bad!" He said, shaking his injured arm slightly as if getting it used to movement. Red raised a skeptical eyebrow at him, "The asshole's gonna get distracted by the infected, he'll be shooting 'em so we have a chance to make a break for it!" That was the smartest thing Hank had said all day. They were closing in, we really didn't have much time for debate anyway.

"Okay, great," I quickly stood, Red already upright, "As soon as he starts shooting them, go out through that back door." I checked to make sure the safety on my pistol was off. It was.

"Hold on," Red's words stopped Hank as he headed down the isle towards the back, "Where are we gonna run to?" We were all talking really fast because of the time constraint, and her question was so frantic I almost couldn't understand her.

I opened my mouth to respond but Hank beat me to it, "Him." He gestured toward the high-rises with his thumb as he solidified my opinion on him possibly being insane.

I knew he had a reasonable vendetta now but it just didn't seem like the smartest idea. They weren't too far, granted, but we didn't know the layout. Sniper man may have barricaded the door or placed mines, I could write a book about things that could go wrong with this idea. But Red and I didn't have a chance to even begin to protest, because mere seconds after his response, bullets stopped pelting the bus and were now aimed somewhere behind us, presumably at infected. Hank pushed the door open immediately.

There was no time for questioning, no time for second guessing, no time for doubts or even slight hesitation because at that moment any of those things would've gotten us killed. As soon as we had jumped from our shelter, I allowed myself a brief moment to assess our surroundings. From what I could see there were more than ten infected coming from basically all directions except the high-rises. So, in theory we would have gone this way even if we hadn't planned it. We were spotted by them instantly and they made a beeline straight for us. It just made me run faster.

We had to zig-zag through the maze of abandoned cars and debris on this road, and in hindsight it would've been better to just vault over them. I assumed it made it harder for sniper guy to get a good aim on us, so that was something. Following every gunshot I heard the signature death gurgle of an infected, so at least he was thinning out the herd. With infected, though, you always had to assume there were more. Because there usually were.

Hank was pretty far ahead of me, having sprinted like a fucking Olympian, and he reached the door to the high-rises first. Using his bulk as a makeshift battering ram, he slammed into it without even trying the handle, and surprisingly enough it swung open. It sounded like he broke something, though, so it was probably locked. We burst inside and closed it behind us, watching in terror through the glass surface as the infected closed in. We needed to block this with something.

Looking around I saw just how under construction this place was. It wasn't finished in the slightest, it was basically just a metal frame with scaffolding everywhere, and the occasional wooden surface that might've been the start of a floor. I looked out the window to the other one, there were only two, and I saw that it was way more finished than this. It actually had established levels and walls and stuff. Hank read my mind and found what looked to be a tool cabinet. It was about mid-chest height and it seemed to weigh a lot, considering it took notable effort for him to shove it in front of the door and it made an awful screeching sound. I had seen infected break down things a lot more sturdy than that, though, so I wasn't reassured.

"Where the fuck do we go?!" Red asked, looking up and around. She was right, it really didn't seem like there was a clear way out besides the entrance we had just deliberately blocked.

I jumped slightly where I stood at the sound of infected throwing their bodies full force against our pathetic barricade. It sounded like there were a _lot_ of them. Too many. Scanning the area a second time with more desperation, I spotted a ladder to ascend the scaffolding. Could infected climb ladders? Either way, we didn't have another option, "That way, up!"

Hank was closest to it, and he caught my meaning, immediately climbing as I ran to follow suit. I could practically feel Red's eyes on me and I knew she didn't approve of this plan. If I remembered correctly, I think she had a thing with heights, which wasn't something I would've ever thought to be true. But I knew Red, and she would definitely push aside whatever fears she had if it meant surviving. After a few dragging seconds I felt the ladder shift as she climbed up beneath me.

When I got to the top and stood on the scaffolding, my stomach did a few backflips at just how unstable it felt. It was old and in serious disrepair. We should _not_ be on this fucking thing, but we didn't have a choice, and I reminded myself of that in my head over and over. The tool cabinet was already starting to tip, the infected's rabidness always being more than enough to plow through any obstacle.

I looked at Hank and was surprised to see him hauling his weight up higher, to another section in this series of rickety surfaces, "Guys, we've gotta get to the other building! There's one of those window cleaner things or something, I think we can use it to get across!" He just kept going up before I could even comprehend what he was suggesting.

Not wanting my mind to shut down and send me into some weird catatonic state from how overwhelmed I was, I forced myself forward and followed the path Hank had gone. It was harder for me because of my nonexistent upper-body strength, but I managed. Red's breathing was getting uneven and I knew that she was _not_ at all okay with how unsafe the scaffolding felt. Right as I got to my feet again, I spotted something up above us and I stopped still.

It was a dude. A kind of old dude. He was a total twig, arms so thin I was surprised he could even hold the sniper rifle in his frail hands. And he knew we were there. He locked eyes with me and it felt like I couldn't move. His rifle was half-raised down at us, and I knew I should've gotten my gun out to shoot at that moment, but it was like I was paralyzed from fear.

Thankfully, Red noticed me staring at something and presumably followed my gaze, seeing the guy too. And _she_ could still shoot. Her hands must've been pretty shaky from the current situation, though, because when she pulled the trigger she only managed to hit his shoulder. The guy was a fucking baby, though, and he cried out like a little girl as he staggered backwards. Hank heard the sound and looked towards it, and I saw his expression turn to that of a predatorial beast. He made his way to the stranger with a new determination, his rage emanating off of him in tangible waves. Worried a bit about what he may do, I quickly ascended a few more levels of scaffolding and caught up with him. Red was at my heels.

It definitely looked like the dude lived up here. There was a crusty old mattress, a bunch of backpacks probably from the people he killed, scattered empty cans, a pile of books, and a single stool from which he sniped at. I wasn't surprised to find Hank pinning this guy against the wall by his neck, almost choking the life out of him. I made no moves to try and make him release his grip, instead just watching. Red joined me at my side, looking amused for a second.

Sniper man gasped and sputtered, trying to find his breath as Hank got right in his face, "Who the _fuck_ do you think you're shootin' at, asshole?!" He pressed him harder against the wooden surface, and I was worried he may snap this guy in half his body was so delicate looking.

The guy didn't talk at all. Probably because he physically couldn't. I could hear the infected downstairs really going to town on our barricade, and I spoke up, "Hank, we don't really have time for this..."

"Oh don't worry, I won't be much longer." He was basically baring his teeth. I'd never seen him so mad, it was weird. His stature made him really intimidating when he wanted to be, I mean, he towered over this dude so much it was almost comical, "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" He abruptly released his death grip on the guy's neck and he fell to the floor on his hands and knees, swallowing gulps of air.

"I'm just..." He coughed a really nasty cough, it sounded like this guy had lung cancer or something it was so bad and I grimaced at the sound, "... just looking out for myself like all of you." He had an accent. I think it was... Irish? Something like that, and his voice was scratchy like he hadn't spoken in years, which was probably true. He seemed utterly alone here.

Red laughed bitterly at him, "Yeah, in the most heartless way fucking possible." Some of the color had drained out of her face. Man, she really _didn't_ like heights. I hadn't ever been in a situation where I would've been able to test the extent of the phobia, but now I could see.

He looked up at her, rubbing at his own neck with his wrinkly hand, "I'm still here, aren't I?" The bastard sounded cocky almost. He was old, probably mid-sixties. I hadn't seen an old person in what felt like forever, there weren't many in the Q.Z, and if there were, they tended to stay holed up indoors. He was probably pretty ready to accept death, I mean, he had lived longer than most people nowadays. He seemed aware of that.

Hank chuckled and grabbed the guy by front of his shirt, lifting him to his feet, "Yeah, we should really do somethin' about that, huh grandpa?" Sniper man showed no fear, not even for a second. He had the most blank expression I'd ever seen on another person. It was kind of unsettling.

"You really think I care about dying?" He asked, tilting his head curiously. He was missing a lot of his teeth, and it was creepy when he smiled, "Boyo, where have you been? This whole world's already dead." This was really weird. I didn't like it. This dude gave me the heebie jeebies like nobody's business.

Hank seemed to be experiencing the same thing, only it frustrated him instead of freaked him out, cuz he literally threw the guy to the floor brutally with a grunt. He winced at the contact then started laughing an extremely crazy laugh that made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

"It doesn't matter what you act like nowadays, there's no rhyme or reason to the things people do anymore, as long as you're surviving." His eyes flitted between the three of us but they hovered on me, since I hadn't commented much this whole time. When he spoke he was staring dead at me, though the question was addressed to all of us, "Oh get off your high horses. Don't act like you all haven't done something you aren't proud of." My head started to hurt.

Red approached the guy who remained laying on the floor in defeat, and she leaned over him, glaring intensely, "Well no shit, but we didn't do it over and over again just to save our sorry asses." His rifle had fallen from his hand long before that, and she picked it up before tossing it down below. The fall was long enough and this place echoed just right for us to hear it break apart into most likely irreparable pieces. It still didn't faze this dude. Nothing seemed to.

Hank towered over sniper man, "Listen you crazy son of a bitch, we're gonna-" His words were cut short by the nearly deafening sound of something heavy falling over _hard_. Shit. The tool cabinet.

I quickly looked down at the door to see infected just pouring straight inside, our barricade shoved out of the way like it was nothing. It only took their hungry eyes a few seconds to spot us up there, and it turns out they didn't need a ladder. Nope, they just scrambled clumsily up the scaffolding, effectively weakening it even further.

"Hank, we need to _go._ " I spoke firmly, rushing over and grabbing his arm. Red was already moving, already shooting down at them, but I wasn't reassured. The piercing noise of their rabid screams was making my head pound and my heart started leaping out of my chest.

His rage dissipated quickly at the realization of this danger. He wasn't totally stupid, I mean, he was reasonable with stuff like this. He shook himself from my grasp and headed back the way we had come, completely forgetting the old guy that had shot him in the arm, just leaving him there on the floor. He wasn't moving, he didn't try to stand up, as if accepting his fate. It was sort of sad, but at that moment I honestly didn't care.

Red stopped shooting at the infected, finding it pointless – it sounded like she was missing a lot, "Where do we go?!" They were a lot faster than us and it was terrifying to see them closing in at such speeds. We had literally no time.

"The window cleaning thing! Over there!" I looked at what he was pointing toward – and it was just that, a window cleaning thing. Those platforms that people would stand on that hung outside of buildings. Parts of its railings had fallen off for some reason, presumably misuse or weathering from years of exposure to the elements. Either way, it looked far from sturdy. It was on the other high-rise, and they were fairly close together, but the very prospect of making that jump made my stomach drop.

Hank's bravery could also be misinterpreted as just sheer stupidity, sometimes it definitely seemed like he never thought things through. This was one of those instances. Without so much as a moments hesitation, he took a running leap straight out the opening in this building's metal frame. My heart climbed its way into my throat and I held my breath, until he actually managed to land safely. Well, safely is a relative term. The thing looked incredibly unstable and it almost buckled under his sudden weight. He quickly got his bearings and he shot the window in front of him open, the glass shattering and falling all the way down to the ground such a long way below. As he stepped inside the new high-rise, he beckoned frantically over at me. It was almost like I could feel the infected nipping at my heels.

I was getting flashbacks from when Red had made me jump out that window back in the Q.Z. I did _not_ want to do this. One false move and I'd be a mangled body on the pavement. I also wasn't the most graceful person, and I tended to lack essential coordination. Maybe that didn't apply in these life-threatening scenarios, though. Only one way to find out.

Before I could overthink this whole thing, I just forced myself forward. For some reason I thought time would like, slow down or something, like in the movies, but that didn't happen. If anything it sorta sped up, I was going so damn fast. Just as I reached the gap, it was like my heart stopped, and instinctively I wanted to freeze when I dumbly looked down. That was quite the drop. But I kept going, knowing I'd chicken out if I second-guessed myself. And finally, I made the jump. It was absolutely terrifying, obviously.

I landed hard and clumsily, actually losing my balance when my legs turned to jelly on impact with the solid surface. I fell onto my hands and knees, petrified at the awful groaning sound that this thing made while I was on it. Hank reached over and literally pulled me inside with ease, tugging me to my feet as well. I looked back toward Red and my face fell even more at the sight of her pure terror. Jesus, that shit had been nightmare-inducing for me and I wasn't even _afraid_ of heights. I could only imagine what she was going through.

Stepping closer to the now shattered window, I knew that she had like less than no time left to jump, "C'mon, Red! I'm right here, you can make it!" I shouted at her, surprised at how firm my voice was. The infected should have been on top of her by then and I didn't quite understand why they weren't. I kept reminding myself in my head over and over that Red knew how to take care of herself. She wouldn't let this be the way she died, not after all the other shit she had gotten through.

My thoughts proved to be right when I saw her take a few steps back to gain momentum and sprint straight for us. Part of me wanted to go out on the platform to help support her when she landed, but I didn't trust two people on that thing at once, so I stayed put. I watched with bated breath as she actually leapt out and was airborne for those short, terrifying moments before she slammed hard onto the platform, skidding on the metal and no doubt hurting herself. I scrambled forward and grabbed her by the shoulders, hauling her inside although she was already getting it together without my help. She was hyperventilating as she managed to get to her feet. I stood as well, adrenaline pumping through me like blood.

"Oh _fuck!"_ Hank suddenly said. I glanced at him to see his eyes wide with terror as he stared back at the high-rise we had jumped from. When I turned as well, I seriously couldn't believe the luck we were having that day. Or, I guess it would be the luck we _weren't_ having. Hell, when I actually thought about it we had kind of just woken up. I'd definitely put this on my list of bad mornings.

The infected had reached the top of the scaffolding, where we had just been. Some rushed into sniper man's little hovel and we could hear the guy screaming. It sure _sounded_ like he was afraid of dying. I think the three of us had all assumed we'd be safe once we made that jump. We hadn't expected the infected to spot us, shout rabidly, and then leap straight in our direction.

Some didn't make it far enough, and they fell. Others partially did, hitting the side of the platform and dangling but not being strong enough to claw themselves up. Then there were the select few that stuck the landing. There were too many on that faulty window cleaning thing at once, it shook like crazy. But fuck, we were cornered. Hank and Red had their guns, and I quickly drew my knife, letting them take down the current ones on the platform at a distance with pinpoint headshots. When one managed to get inside, Red and Hank unfortunately both needing to reload at the same time, I took an opportunity and I charged at it. The thing was focused on the ones who seemed like the real threat – Hank in particular, and it was heading towards him. I maneuvered behind it and quickly embedded my blade through the back of its skull. It fell to the floor, dead, and I cringed at the blood now on my hand.

Red pushed me aside and out of the line of fire while they downed more, but it seemed like they were fucking endless. The ones that had killed the old man were satisfied, I guess, which just added four more to the group of monsters leaping right at us without even slight apprehension. I was amazed that the platform hadn't fallen. The noises it was making weren't good at all, and I _so_ wished that a particularly fat Runner showed up and finally pushed it over the edge, so that it'd break and they couldn't get to us anymore.

" _Shit._ " Red cursed suddenly. I looked over to see that her gun had jammed or something, I'm not entirely sure how that works, but she just growled in frustration and tossed it to her feet before gesturing frantically for me to give her mine, which I did without question, "There's too many of 'em!" She said, her words making me want to audibly gulp like a goddamn cartoon. If _Red_ was getting nervous, then I should be terrified. Which I was. Now even more so.

Hank slapped a new clip into his pistol with almost unreal speed, "We need to get that platform down!" He was right, but that seemed easier said than done. We didn't know how these things worked. I opened my mouth to state just that, but Red was suddenly moving.

She ran toward the window we had shot open and quickly aimed her gun outside. Not liking her close proximity with oncoming infected, I rushed to her side with my knife at the ready, prepared to shank anything that tried to hurt her. Hank was keeping them at bay pretty well though, but I had to be safe. Red was only there for a second, and what she did was probably the smartest thing I'd ever seen anyone do, ever.

She raised her, or well, _my_ gun, and shot one of the little clampy things that connect the wires to the railings. It broke from the bullet, since it was so fragile already, and the platform collapsed on that side, now dangling by the mere thread of the other wire. That only held for a few more seconds before snapping too, and the whole window cleaning thing dropped all the way down to the ground so far beneath us. But we weren't out of the woods yet.

There had been like, eight infected on the platform (I know, I still have no clue how they didn't break it just from that weight) at the time Red had worked her magic, and six of them managed to get inside before the thing totally fell. Fuck. Red and I backed up frantically, but they were already in, and we just had to kill them.

Only one came for me, three at Hank, and two at Red. It looked like mine was on its way to becoming a full-on clicker – I could already see part of its skull being broken through by the fungi. Its noises sounded kind of different from the others too, not clicking, but closer than the basic shrieks were in semblance. It also seemed even more ravenous, and it ran at me with such a primal ferocity that I almost froze from the sheer terror.

When it pounced on me, I barely managed to lunge out of the way, heart pounding at an unhealthily fast and uneven pace. For the two seconds that it was distracted I desperately lunged forward with my knife, but it moved and the blade only got a moderately deep cut in on the thing's back. Though it wasn't much, it shrieked from the wound and just seemed angrier than before. I had literally no time to react as it pounced on me like a fucking tiger, trying to pin me to the floor but I refused to get trapped like that. I got into a struggle with it, keeping it off of me with my forearm as I wrestled until I managed to straddle this bastard. Its arms were flailing, trying to claw at me, and I was glad my jacket was so thick or the thing would've gotten some good scratches in. It was _not_ accepting defeat, though, and it bucked me off before I had the chance to kill it. I staggered to my feet, watching it stand and lunge at me again, but this time I didn't dodge. Nope, I just stood firm, and once it got close enough I pushed past my apprehension and slammed my blade as far into its head as it could go. It pierced straight through the fungi.

When its corpse fell, my knife was still firmly embedded in its flesh. Before I went to pull it out, I allowed myself a few seconds to glance toward the others. Hank had shot down two of his attackers with ease, and was having trouble with the last one – but it looked like he could handle himself. Red was up against two still, though both were littered with bullet holes. Although they could die in other ways, the most effective one was always going for the head, which I'm sure she tried to do but missed in all the commotion. One of them rammed brutally into her, the force actually disarming Red as her gun dropped to the floor. Shit.

I reached down and tugged my blade from the dead body at my feet before running over to her as fast as I could go. The infected was pressing her against the wall hard, and she struggled and kicked as it tried to get a bite out of her. Before it had the chance, I was already there, and I grabbed it by the shoulders – catching it off guard and tugging it away. Red scooped up her gun as soon as she was able right as I jammed my knife upward from under the thing's chin. It gurgled and sputtered before going limp, as per usual. Red shot the other one between the eyes without so much as a second glance.

There was one more gunshot, and I looked quickly over to see Hank now on the floor on his back, having gotten knocked over by that last infected and almost overpowered. I couldn't see his face, the thing's body was still on top of him, but he just laid there, not making even slight motions to get it off. Red was at his side in seconds, and she pushed the carcass from Hank with her boot, bringing him into view.

My chest constricted at the look on his face. It was pure, utter devastation and terror. His eyes were wide, his jaw dropped, all of the color having drained from his face as he could barely breathe. Oh God, what had happened? Red inhaled sharply, and I looked at her. I had never seen that expression on her face. I can't even begin to describe it. She just seemed... overwhelmed. What was I missing?

Then I saw it too. On Hank's arm. And my heart shattered into pieces, breath getting caught in my throat, eyes slightly stinging as I gasped at the realization. He got bit. _Oh Jesus, not Hank, God, why him? Why now?_ _Please no..._ My thoughts were stupid. Foolish, rhetorical questions that were dumb to even think of, but I had done this before. It was sort of just what you did when this happened: Look for someone to blame when in all honesty it wasn't anyone's fault. You just want to take all of the pent up frustration out on something, _anything_ , but there's nothing. Which just makes it worse once you figure that out.

Red shook her head back and forth, "... shit." She mumbled to herself, not able to look Hank in the eyes. She waited a few more seconds, before seemingly regaining her composure with a quick breath, and she turned to the big but lovable oaf on the floor with her gun raised. My eyes widened so much I thought they may pop out of my fucking head.

Hank blinked twice, as if returning to reality, and raised his hands slightly in defense as he started to ramble things out, "Wait, Red, just gimme a-"

 _Bang!_

His words stopped short. His body went limp. Blood started to pool around his skull and I couldn't bring myself to look at his face. I hadn't noticed, but a hand had moved to cover my mouth. Now that I felt it, my skin was clammy. My mind couldn't process what had just happened. It was too fast. Too soon.

It was all too soon.

Red inhaled deeply, shakily, seeming absolutely hollow at that moment. Without a single word to me, she bent over, reached toward Hank's hand and slowly withdrew the glove from it. She took the one off her hand too, now holding them loosely in the pair that they were intended to be in. After staring at them for a few, lingering seconds, she shot open a window at her side and threw them straight out it.


	8. Warwick

"It's coming up." Red told me. We had been walking for hours and for once conversation was pretty scarce. In fact, ever since the high-rise, we had probably only exchanged like ten or fifteen words. I just didn't know what to say. Neither did she, either that or she didn't want to talk about it.

Walking around, just the two of us, felt weird. We had to go back to where we had slept that night to get Hank's backpack, the dumb guy had left it there. Classic Hank. Not wanting to carry it, we had to split up its contents between us, which seemed... I dunno, disrespectful? I kept expecting him to pipe up from behind me with some irrelevant comment, or to hear his signature heavy footsteps. It was too fucking quiet now. It wasn't awkward or anything like that, it was rarely awkward between Red and I, I'd describe it more as hollow. Empty.

The sun was starting to rise. We had gotten up extra early, since sleep wasn't easy and we honestly just wanted to get this trip over with. We were finally almost there, or at least in the vicinity of where Red assumed this place would be. It was bittersweet. I tried to get myself excited, to remind myself that we'd be actually safe soon if what Red heard was true, but it was just really hard. It had been a while since anyone I cared about died, I mean, in the Q.Z the only person I was attached to was Red and she was obviously fine. I knew what loss felt like and I was a bit too familiar with grieving, but I had sort of forgotten just how bad it made you feel at first. Eventually it tended to dull, but at the moment it was so sharp and palpable. I did my best to stop thinking about him. There was no point in it now, it was done.

The sun was coming up behind us. I wanted things to be normal again – I wanted to get Red to start talking. I hated this weird laconic thing we had going, even though it was kind of anticipated with this situation. It wasn't like us to be quiet. We were usually always chatting, whether the conversation was relevant or completely random. I missed that.

I took a deep breath before finally speaking up, "We're facing east now, right?" I adjusted the weight of my bag on my shoulder, not looking at her.

There was a pause that bordered on being a bit too long, "West."

"Ahh fuck." I cursed to myself, kicking a rock in front of me with my boot. Red laughed a little and the tightness I had gotten used to my chest having loosened up slightly. When I glanced at her I saw a small smile on her face, which made a big one immediately come to mine. I hadn't expected her to smile for days, "It's not fair, y'know, you lived on a farm so you probably had to know where the sun rose because of like... roosters and whatever." A cold breeze made me shiver, and I shoved my quaking hands into the pockets of my jacket.

Red scoffed, looking at me for a second just to express how ridiculous she thought I was, "Bitch, I didn't even live on a farm." We had left the more urban parts of the area and were in a rural place. There were trees scattered around and the city skyline was pretty far behind us. We had been hiking up this mild hill for a while now, and my legs were starting to burn.

"I don't believe that for a second. Nah, you're a farm girl at heart, don't deny it."

"I mean, my cousins had a farm, and I spent a lot of time there, but-"

"-Ha! I knew it." I cut her off and she shot me a playfully disproving look, "Did you like, ride tractors into town instead of cars?" She opened her mouth to respond but I didn't give her a chance, "No, it was probably horses. Do they have reserved lanes in the roads down there just for horses? Do you have to have a horse license?"

Despite the fact I was trying to piss her off, she couldn't look more amused with this discussion, "Are those serious questions?" I nodded, feigning confusion as to why she'd doubt me, "Well, fuckin', no we didn't have horse licenses, and actually we couldn't ride 'em into town. People got all freaked out cuz they were too 'unruly and fast'."

I smirked to myself, "Yeah, I guess they had too much _horse_ power, huh?" I waited for the inevitable response I was going to get, a grin coming to my face and growing more with each passing second.

She shook her head back and forth to herself, looking down at her feet as she had a good laugh, "You're such a goddamn loser, I don't know how I even put up with you..." There was a notable substance behind her words that I caught because of how well I knew her. She was extremely appreciative of me initiating conversation. And for being there with her in general. The feeling was mutual but I didn't bring it up.

She had slowed her pace slightly and I was ahead of her then, so I turned around to walk backwards and face her, "Oh shut up, you love me."

She looked at me in amusement, "Don't flatter yourself, and watch the fuck out you don't have the coordination to do that." She gestured to me and how I was walking. I waved my hand at her dismissively, "You're literally beggin' for trouble."

Unfortunately, she was right, because just when I opened my mouth to retort with something sassy, I lost my footing and started to fall over. Red reached forward and grabbed me by the backpack strap, which almost kept me standing, but as she held me there – the only thing preventing me from wiping out – she got this devilish look on her face. My eyes widened at the realization of what she planned, and before I got a chance to speak, she released her grip and I fell to the ground. It didn't actually hurt, but of course I was going to act like I had just broken every bone in my body.

She laughed so hard she doubled over, and my obligatory response of anger toward her was almost kept down in me. It had been a really long time since I'd heard her do that: _really_ laugh. Like a belly laugh, one that makes your sides hurt. I got to my feet, unable to keep the big smile off my face although I managed a glare.

"You bitch!" I punched her arm with decent force but she didn't even flinch, just trying to regain her composure, "What if I had gotten hurt? I could've hit my head on a rock or something and died!" I was unintentionally starting to chuckle along with her, finding it too hard to restrain myself. This was just what was needed right now. A sort of cleansing humor. The air around us dropped that weight it had carried ever since Hank, and although I knew it wasn't permanent, the relief was greatly appreciated.

She was starting to calm down, "Oh shut up, I knew your pack would break your fall."

I forced a pout onto my face, "It's not funny! That was dangerous!"

She scoffed, "If it's not funny how come you're all giggly, huh?" She started walking again, purposely knocking into me with her shoulder as she passed by.

I kept up with ease as we finally neared the crest of this slope, "I'm only laughing cuz you're laughing. It's infectious." I considered walking with a limp to pretend I had actual injuries from my fall, but decided against it.

"Yeah, yeah, sure."

"I'm serious! That wasn't even-" I stopped in my tracks when something finally came into view. It had taken forever – it seemed like – but we had got to the top of the hill, and not a long ways off was what I assumed to be our destination.

It was a town. A fairly sized town with the tops of their buildings just visible over the makeshift wall surrounding it. It sort of looked like only a part of what the town used to be was encased like that, because I could see a few scattered, decrepit edifices abandoned in the distance. The wall was what really caught my eye. It was meager, yeah, but it seemed like it got the job done. From what I could tell it mainly consisted of old chunks of plywood or something, but the outside was lined with barbed wire, and they had even dug a little trench around it like a fucking medieval castle moat. It looked thick enough for people to walk along it, though, but I didn't see anyone. Suffice it to say, I was impressed.

Red was taken a bit aback too. When I glanced at her I saw that her jaw had dropped. It almost seemed like she hadn't expected this to be here, like she had prepared herself for the worst. I guess that was appropriate. Nowadays getting your hopes up almost always resulted in disappointment. She got it together in a few moments and locked eyes with me, before gesturing forward, indicating we should approach it.

Though slightly apprehensive and suspicious of this new location, I did just that. There were no people anywhere from what I could see, which was unsettling. What if this place had gotten overrun? We would have no way of knowing until it was possibly too late, and we might be walking straight into a horde. We were dangerously low on supplies now, only having about ten bullets between the both of us. I'd rather not waste them. Red was known for her caution, though, and if she felt something fishy about this she would've told me to stop. When I heard nothing from her I just kept going.

There was what seemed to be a sort of gate ahead of us – if we kept following the road like we were, we'd stop straight in front of it. I tried to listen for signs of humans, for any encouraging sound really, but got nothing besides the chirping of birds. There was a wind-chime somewhere in the distance and I heard it being tossed about by the light breeze in the air. Red was at my heels. She didn't have her gun out.

She grabbed my arm a fair distance from this presumed gate. It stood out from the rest of the wall because of the lack of wire on the outside of it, and there was a visible gap between two pieces of it which made this section just look like a huge door. I froze, as she did, and was about to look at her questionably, when I heard a gun cock.

My eyes moved to the sound – up – and I saw someone. A younger guy, aiming a hunting rifle straight at my face, looking more than ready to pull the trigger and blow my head off. I remained paralyzed. Then I heard another one, and I glanced in my peripheral vision to see a second person pointing their gun in our direction. Shit. What had we just walked into?

"Don't move." The first guy I noticed said, his voice rather low – trying to keep quiet by the sound of it. He didn't need to say that, I was already cemented to my spot from fear, "Hands up, and don't even think about reachin' for those guns."

Red and I did what he said without a word, although knowing her I was a little worried about what she may do in this situation. I knew that at the moment it was best to just go along with what they told us – they definitely had the advantage here in every aspect. Trying anything would be stupid. But Red often didn't take that into consideration and she had always hated submitting to someone else, no matter what the consequences were for rebelling.

"Hey," She spoke up and I winced at how disrespectful she sounded. Now was _seriously_ not the time to bust out the sass. I shot her a pointed look that she didn't catch, "Quit with this security bull and tell Finn Red's here."

I had no idea who Finn was, but when she spoke the name the look on the younger guy's face changed. It showed a flash of recognition. His brow crinkled and things were quiet for a few moments before he finally just sighed and called out to the second wall person, "Keep an eye on 'em. I'll be right back." He propped his rifle up against the wall and descended out of sight.

Red and I both kept our hands up, wanting to keep our brains inside of our skulls if at all possible. I shuffled ever so slightly where I stood to get an actual look at who was watching us now, and was surprised to see a teenager. Some girl that looked like, fourteen or something. She had a magnum in her hand, and she held it more steadily than I could with my pistol. Even though she was young, I had a feeling I shouldn't underestimate her. Not that I planned to.

"Who's Finn?" I whispered under my breath, trying not to move my lips too much. I was just loud enough for Red to hear.

We started to hear a bit of a commotion from behind the gate and out of view. A lot of footsteps and some distant voices, "The guy who told me 'bout this place. He always said if I wanted to come, just say I knew him." Well at least that justified her seemingly unaffected disposition when we got those guns aimed at us. Still, though, I would've appreciated some kind of heads-up.

Right when I was about to vocalize that complaint, the large barrier in front of us started to creak slowly open. The teenage girl holstered her weapon when she saw that, and I finally let my arms drop back to my side once Red did. It took an agonizingly long time for the thing to even have a gap between it, but as soon as there was one, some dude squeezed himself through it and headed straight for us.

His skin was olive and his hair dark, but his eyes a startlingly light blue that greatly stood out. He had stubble that for some reason looked extra scratchy, and his teeth were weirdly pointy – I could tell cuz he was grinning ear to ear at the sight of Red. He wore fingerless gloves and a fancy utility belt covered in various pouches of different sizes. I couldn't help but notice the machete strapped to his thigh, sheathed but still huge.

Red smirked back at the stranger and he came over, shaking her single outstretched hand vigorously with both of his. He chuckled, "Well I'll be damned! What on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods, little lady?" He withdrew, not having given me so much as a glance as he started to head back to the half-open gate. He gestured for us to follow, and Red tugged me along by the arm, sensing my mild apprehension and not wanting to vocally coerce me. I automatically assumed this guy was Finn. I mean, who else could it be? The teenage girl smiled very weakly at me, sort of as if to say "don't worry about it", and it made my chest feel lighter.

"Lets just say I'm not welcome in the Boston Q.Z anymore." Red told him just as we entered the vicinity of the walls. She may have said something else, but I was too distracted by our new location.

It was indeed a town, like I had thought – just a standard little settlement in New England. The buildings were scattered around and they were almost all white, with the same basic colonial structural design. There was a pretty big church in the distance. Though the area seemed expansive enough, I could tell they had definitely only walled off a portion of what it used to be. Maybe they didn't have enough materials to properly contain any more territory and they wanted to play it safe, but they made the limited space work. There were a few tents set up here and there on the sides of the road amongst the rich foliage, hidden slightly from brush. People walked up and down the street, going about their business almost like normal. The only thing that made me remember the world had ended was the fact everyone was visibly armed with something, whether it be a knife or a pistol. I guessed nobody felt safe enough otherwise.

Despite all of this, it didn't seem perfect. There was some weird stuff that also immediately caught my eye, like the few areas that were riddled with bullet holes. Who had been shooting, and why at walls? I doubted there was an abundance of bullets, let alone enough to pelt the side of a building with lead. Nope, those would only logically be there if an attack had happened, which was unsettling. There was also the occasional sketchy dude that had a shifty look on their face and their hands shoved in their pockets, glancing at you as if they were sizing you up. And of course, no matter where you were, there was a commutative sense of bleakness in the air that wouldn't ever fade. I'd almost forgotten what it felt like without that weight on your shoulders.

Finn started leading us down the main road we stood on, the gate being closed by a few guys behind us. It weighed a lot, because when I looked back, the dudes seemed pretty buff and they were having trouble. That seemed good and bad, for one it'd be hard for people to get in but it'd also be hard to get out in a hurry. When it completely shut, I felt kind of trapped. I didn't let it bother me and just listened to our impromptu tour guide.

The guy was very animated in his movements, talking with his hands and projecting his voice as if he were on a stage, "Welcome to Warwick, MA – the place to be with the people to see!" He spun theatrically on his heel, pointing at Red with finger guns as he walked backwards, "I've been waiting for you to come here, so I guess it's just my luck that you done goofed somehow and got kicked out of soldier-boy turf, eh?" She rolled her eyes to herself, like how she would at almost everything I said. I smiled a bit to myself at that realization, and decided silently that I liked this guy, or at the very least his style. When Red didn't answer, he just shrugged and focused on his task, "We've got walls, we've got guards, we've got guns, we've got food, and naturally-" He led us to a nearby building, reached for the handle of the door and pushed it open, "-we've got booze." He winked at the two of us, and for the first time he registered my existence.

I poked my head inside the place to see a makeshift little bar, complete with a bartender and a lot of survivors at varying levels of inebriation. Someone out of my sight was strumming lazily on a guitar, and a pang of something shot through my chest as I realized how long it'd been since I'd heard any type of music. I missed it.

When I looked, Red's face had lit up. I could tell it was from the music too. She had said some small things before, mentioning that she had always loved it, and it was so rare to hear nowadays. I could basically feel her nostalgia. It made me smile along with her, and Finn crossed his arms with pride at our visible happiness.

"Yes, I know, it's quite impressive." He held his chin up high in mock snootiness.

She just laughed lightly, "Yeah yeah great, booze-hound, what else ya got?" She was feigning not thinking this stuff was awesome, and I could tell that was just how these two's relationship was – often not taking one another seriously or allowing the other to feel gratified if they had control over it.

Finn scoffed, "Fine then, come this way." He led us further down the street. I was looking all around, registering all the people who looked at us funny since we were new. I assumed everyone knew each other here, even though there was a pretty good amount of inhabitants. It was just a vibe that was given off. At the moment they all seemed kind of standoffish, but I knew that wasn't abnormal, I mean, they had no idea who we were and trust wasn't something given easily anymore.

Our guide stopped walking and pointed at something to our right. When I turned to look, I saw what seemed to be a makeshift gun range. But these people weren't dumb and they didn't use actual guns, knowing that the sound would draw all the infected for miles around, and were instead using bows. Jeez, I hadn't seen a bow since before the outbreak, let alone actually watched one in use. There was a row of kids, varying from around ages ten to sixteen, I'd guess, all firing at targets in the distance. From what I could tell they seemed pretty good. Now that I thought about it, a bow would be a pretty awesome weapon – ranged _and_ silent? That was definitely a plus.

"And here you can see us training the youngsters. Yep, we've got a nice little army of Robin Hoods comin' along." He put his hands on his hips, "Impressed _now_?"

Red just stubbornly shook her head back and forth, though she was smiling at the sight presented to her. _I_ for one was impressed, but I didn't say anything for some reason. One of the younger archers shot an arrow that landed a perfect bulls-eye. Damn.

Finn groaned in aggravation, "Alright, so that's how it's gonna be..." He looked around, trying to find something that would actually get a rise out of her, and snapped his fingers when his eyes landed on a structure at the very end of the road, "Bingo! C'mon, over here." His eagerness caused him to actually jog ahead. Red and I exchanged an amused glance before just matching his pace without question.

We were heading towards a building that didn't look like anything special. Another white, colonial structure. This one was only one floor and I guess it had an extra-pointy roof, but other than that I wasn't sure why he was so pumped about it. The catch must've been on the inside, I assumed.

He skidded to a stop on the heels of his worn out boots once he reached the double doors, and he turned to face us, "Alrighty, you two ladies look like you've gone too many days without a proper meal," I frowned, glancing down at myself for a second before glaring slightly at him though he didn't notice, "Here in good ole' Warwick, you won't need to worry about that anymore, because..." He left us in anticipation for a few dragging moments before finally moving to push the doors open wide, stepping in, "...Voila!"

Red and I entered in unison and looked around. It wasn't much, but it was definitely something. A cafeteria of sorts, spanning across three big rooms, all of them full of tables of varying size, shape, and material. It was jam packed with people, and I realized that they were all eating breakfast since it _was_ morning. I had almost forgotten the three meals of the day, I mean, in this world, you just ate when you found stuff to eat, or when your life wasn't in danger. It was pretty amazing to see something like this. Even back in the Q.Z, you yourself dictated when you used your ration cards – and because there were usually so few, you only went to get food when you were literally about to starve to death.

Finn kept talking while we examined everything with awe, "We're almost totally self-sufficient here, we grow our own stuff and we have wells and rain catchers for water. We're workin' on trying to find pigs or cows or something, cuz that'd be awesome, but they're a bit scarce as of late." He shrugged slightly, seeming indifferent on the absence of livestock, and beckoned us with him as he proceeded through the building, heading to a back exit. We followed slowly, the initial amazement of the cafeteria now wearing off, "Here, I'll show you our crops." He pushed the door open and held it that way for us to head out.

We entered a sizable fenced in area with plowed sections of land, things like corn and other vegetables growing from the earth. They were starting to wilt and die, with the cold weather approaching and all. Though I wondered what they did when they couldn't rely on these crops, I didn't ask for some reason. I spotted the rain catchers he had mentioned a bit off in the distance. There were a few people wandering around, tending to the plants with watering cans, picking weeds, that sort of thing.

I smiled to myself, "Hey Finn, Red would be great at this, she-" My words were halted by a firm punch to my arm, and I just stifled a laugh, feeling Red's frustration emanate off of her. He seemed amused by this interaction, and he opened his mouth to add something in but was interrupted.

"Red?" An unfamiliar voice spoke up to our left. We all looked in unison to see a teenage girl, blonde, young, dirt on her hands and clothes since she had been tending to the crops. Her brown eyes were wide and her lips slightly parted, as if she was trying to say something else – but her words got caught in her throat and only some small little noises came out. I raised an eyebrow at her, confused.

When I glanced questioningly at Red, I was surprised to see her jaw dropped and her expression showing such powerful emotions it almost made my chest physically ache, "No fucking way..." She muttered to herself, clearly in disbelief about something or other.

I finally decided to make my misunderstanding vocal, but before I could get a word out, Red literally lunged at this girl and wrapped her tightly in her arms, so tight it looked like it may hurt. This stranger returned the hug immediately with equal force, squeezing her eyes shut, looking like she thought Red was just a figment of her imagination and that she would dissipate into the air if she let her go. This scene was moving, yeah, but I'm sure it would've been more so if I had context on what was going on.

Finn walked up to the two, arms crossed, me at his heels, and he asked, "Clarice, you know Red?" Clarice. So that was her name. It didn't sound familiar at all.

It was like the two had been pulled out of their temporary haze and they both came to simultaneously. Though it looked difficult for them both, they withdrew from their embrace but continued to stare at each other in what seemed to be tremendous relief and pleasant surprise.

Clarice laughed slightly, the sound strangely familiar to Red's own that I knew so well, "Yeah, we're cousins."

Cousins? Like the cousins that lived on that farm Red had mentioned? That definitely explained some things. Now that I took a closer look, there was a little resemblance. The two both had slight freckles dotting the upper bridge of their noses and they had the same strong jaw, but besides that, they didn't have many features in common. Then again I guess cousins don't have to look alike.

I hadn't seen Red smile so broadly and genuinely in literally years. It was incredibly refreshing. She let out a dragging exhale that she had held in from surprise, "I can't... how are you even here..?" She laughed lightly to herself, seeming to be completely shocked and unable to even form thoughts. She gently reached forward to push some of Clarice's hair affectionately behind her ear, "Jesus, look how tall you are! What the hell happened?"

Clarice chuckled at her, shaking her head back and forth, "Eight years happened, moron." It was subtle, more so than Red's, but this girl had a slight southern drawl lingering on a few of her words. She couldn't stop grinning either, causing vague dimples to appear in her cheeks.

Eight years. So Red hadn't seen Clarice since before the outbreak even happened. She had probably assumed that her cousin was dead, as anyone basically did with their relatives at that point. And since from what I gathered Clarice's old home was that farm in Georgia, the odds of her also somehow making her way to this obscure, rural town in Massachusetts were nearly impossible to grasp. Now I felt about as surprised as Red must've.

"Good to see you didn't lose that sass." The expression on her face was endearingly sincere. I had literally never seen her that genuinely happy the entire time we'd known each other. Sure there were a couple moments when the world around us seemed to temporarily fade away, when we would laugh so hard it would hurt, but those were few and far between and usually only for a second or two. This was lasting. It had been straight minutes and it hadn't faded. I couldn't help but smirk slightly too.

Finn decided to jump in at that comment, and he shifted from foot to foot, "Nope, that's her most prominent personality trait." He rubbed at the rough stubble of his chin as Clarice shot him a playful glare.

"And about how I got here, it's uh..." For the first time, the girl's face fell. It was like she aged by five years – the way her smile disappeared and was replaced by that signature, empty, hopeless look that the majority of people now adopted as their neutral expression. It was... unsettling to see that on a teenager's face. Especially after she had such a seemingly permanent smile there just seconds before. Her eyes moved to her shoes, "...complicated." The way she said the word hinted at a much deeper meaning. I caught it, but I guess Red's usual deduction skills must've been absent on account of her disoriented state because it went right over her head.

"Whadya mean? Where's aunt Wanda? Or Clyde?" Out of everyone I knew, Red had always been the most intuitive in social situations like this. She noticed the most subtle of nuances in people's dispositions, always detected hidden intentions or concealed secrets. It never failed to impress me. But for some reason, at that moment, all of that seemed to be thrown straight out the window.

Now, I didn't know who Wanda or Clyde were, but I was assuming they were somehow related to Clarice. As I watched this teenage girl listen to her cousin's questions, my chest constricted and I almost urged Red to stop this spontaneous interrogation but for some reason kept it back – assuming Red would figure it out on her own. Clarice's fists were clenching gradually with each passing second and the color was draining from her face. The pressure that she felt was so blatant that it was almost contagious – a slight weight coming to my own shoulders as well.

Red surprisingly kept going, confusing me even more, "C'mon, I mean, how bout Cass? Huh? Dumbass Cass? Jeez what trouble has that boy gotten into since I last saw him, I can only imagine." Clarice was visibly coming apart at the seams but her elder cousin was completely unaware. I stepped a bit closer, almost ready enough to intervene.

"It's..." Clarice finally manage to get a word out, though it was meek and nearly inaudible. I struggled to hear it and apparently Red couldn't at all. She was completely ignoring her usual post-apocalyptic manners. You just don't ask about people that might be dead.

"What?" Her arsenal of oblivious inquiries had unfortunately yet to be drained, "Oh, and Louise must be around here somewhere, she-"

"- _It's just me._ " Clarice forced herself to speak firmly and loudly, almost too much so, drawing the brief attention of a nearby worker. They shot us a glance before returning to their farming. Clarice's cheeks warmed slightly at the realization of her previous volume, and she avoided eye contact like it was toxic.

Her words finally made Red shut up, thank God, and I saw the realization flicker across her expression. Guilt followed shortly thereafter. I understood at that moment that Red was just getting the news of presumably all of those people's deaths, and that was a lot to take in. She had really strong willpower and an impressive threshold for emotional pain, but I knew that it could falter sometimes. I wondered if that was about to happen now, though I doubted it since we were in full view of so many people.

The silence that followed was awkward to say the very least. I felt like I shouldn't say anything because I hadn't even been introduced to Clarice or even Finn, so I was just a nameless tag-along at this point. I was kind of waiting for Red to say something, but she looked to be pretty much in shock from the information she could infer from what Clarice had just told her. I made a mental note to see if she wanted to talk about it later, but said nothing then.

Finally, to my slight surprise, it was Finn who piped up, "Right, so... reunited! Great! Uh, since I'm assuming you guys are gonna be staying here I should probably show you where you'll sleep..." He was resorting to his previously forgotten tour guide role to try and dissipate this tension that had abruptly set in. It sort of worked. I think we were all just equally as willing for things to lighten up because we went right along with it immediately.

Red blinked twice and shook her head back and forth slightly, returning to full awareness, and looked at him with a nod. Clarice was standing so stiffly I felt like a slight breeze would blow her over like a plank of wood. She didn't look at any of us. Finn was already heading back the way we had come, but something held me to my spot.

I decided to take initiative for the first time in a fair while and spoke up at a lowish volume to the teenager, "Hey, do you wanna come?" My addressing Clarice seemed to startle her, since she jumped slightly and inhaled sharply, though it was subtle. Her eyes shot to me and she looked confused, considering I hadn't really spoken a word since she had that family reunion, "Or, are you like on designated farming duty?"

"Uh..." She looked a bit over her shoulder at the patch of crops she had been working on before, "...no, I can leave." I just smiled at her and started to move to catch up with Red and Finn, when she quickly asked something before following, "Hang on, what's your name?"

"Colleen." I was secretly super thankful that someone had finally asked. Hooray for first-name-basis.

I walked sort of fast to be at Red's side again, she and Finn were halfway through the cafeteria thing by the time Clarice and I got there. She addressed me with a glance in her peripheral vision, but must've heard another pair of footsteps behind us because she looked over her shoulder. Noticing Clarice, she slowed her pace so that she could walk alongside her, standing close, feeling very protective – I could tell. That was justified. I just remained in the middle of the sort of line that had been formed.

Finn led us to what apparently used to be a mansion for big wigs or something. Red and Clarice were chatting the entire way there, the conversation becoming less and less forced as time passed. I decided not to eavesdrop but it was kind of hard not to. Mainly they just talked about the town, avoiding potentially touchy topics or rather anything regarding the past. Red had definitely learned her lesson in that department. The place was a huge colonial house with questionable architecture that led to there being a lot of tiny-ish rooms on the upper floors. This was where a lot of people stayed. He told us that something had happened to a couple of previous residents (not giving details, us not asking) and brought us to a room that had two twin beds in it. Like _real_ beds, with mattresses that weren't made of rocks and soft, heavy blankets on them to effectively keep out cold. I felt like we were in a goddamn luxury hotel. There were other rooms with people in them to our left and right, but the walls were really thick and sturdy so I wasn't worried about that.

Red and I walked in with our awe clearly shown on our faces, smiling broadly as we looked at our new cozy dwellings. She approached a small lamp on one of the bedside tables and turned it on, effectively filling the room with a comfortingly dim light. Whatever weights had previously settled in on my shoulders were now lifted completely off, at least for a good few seconds. Finn leaned against the door frame with a smug smile on his face, knowing that he had finally impressed us now no matter what Red said. Clarice stuck in the hallway outside of the room and she had a small little smirk too, probably having anticipated our response but was still pleased by actually seeing it for herself.

"Jeez, Finn, I feel like we're fucking V.I.P's or something." Red spoke up, running her fingers along the patterns on the blankets our new beds had.

He scoffed at her, "Please, some people have entire houses to themselves. Well, like one-story ranches, but still, houses."

"Seriously?" I asked, looking out the sole window on the wall opposite the doorway. It was weird to see people walking around freely, chatting with each other, smiling, with no soldiers around toting guns and bad attitudes. This was exactly what I had wanted for _years_. But I didn't say anything like that aloud.

"Yep. We've got running water too. It's cold but it's something." That was probably the best thing I'd heard in literally forever. I hadn't showered since the Q.Z. Lets just say I definitely could use one.

Clarice's voice caught my attention and I turned around to face her, Red having done the same, "On Fridays we have movie nights in the library. We've got a generator. The selection is kinda scarce though."

Jesus Christ when was the last time I'd seen a movie? Not since before the outbreak, so roughly eight entire years. Goddamn. I didn't even know what day it was at that point, things had gotten sort of melded together on the journey there. I didn't ask at that moment.

Finn snapped his fingers and pointed at Red, remembering something by the looks of it, "Oh, Red, I forgot. You've gotta talk with Raleigh."

She hefted the weight of her backpack off of her shoulders and set it gently down to the floor, "Raleigh?"

"Yeah, he sorta runs this place. He's not too strict about most things but he wants to know if there are any newcomers."

"Okay, but shouldn't Colleen come too?" She gestured to me and I was relieved that Finn finally knew my name without me having to awkwardly perform a delayed self-introduction, "She's a newcomer."

He glanced at me for a second, "Erm, well, no. See, when new people come Raleigh only really needs to see the uh, well, leader of the group, and I sort of assumed..." He moved his hands in a weighing scales gesture, having trouble with wording what he was trying to explain without sounding rude.

I didn't really know how to feel about that assumption. I mean yeah, if you were around Red and I for a little while it definitely seemed like she was the more dominant personality and just generally more assertive one, but still. I dunno. I didn't let it bother me at the moment.

Red chuckled slightly, "Oh, am I the 'leader' here, Finn?" Before he could respond she just waved her hand at him dismissively, "Whatever, just take me to the guy in a bit. Can Colleen and I just unpack for a sec?"

He raised his hands up in mock-surrender and sauntered down the hall, out of sight. Clarice shot us both a smile before slinking away too, probably needing to return to her work. Once we were alone I let out a dragging exhale and dropped my bag on the floor with an audible _thud._ This was a _lot_ to process and talk about, but now it seemed like we had all the time in the world. Honestly, for the first time in a really long time, I felt safe. Even in the Q.Z, the prominent soldier presence tended to make you feel a little uneasy and it sorta seemed like fun was prohibited. Also, here the air was fresh and outdoorsy like it was _supposed_ to be. I loved that.

"Well, we're here." Red said, reaching up and letting her hair out of its ponytail. Now I knew that the vibe of safety was mutual. She fiddled with the ends of her red locks and mumbled to herself, "Jesus this is gettin' long. Think they've got barbers here?" There was a small mirror hanging on a nearby wall and she approached it, looking at herself and furrowing her brow.

I walked up to be behind her and made a cutting motion with finger scissors, "I can do it for you - can't be that hard."

"There ain't no way I'm lettin' you anywhere near my neck with a pair of scissors." She moved to her pack and started to take her stuff out of it.

Our banter was light for the moment. We weren't really talking about the stuff we should've been, like how we felt about this place, or why there were those bullet holes in the walls when we first came in, or even this new Raleigh guy. We were just talking about random shit, like the length of our hair. That was just how Red and I worked. Without the need for vocal explanation, we knew when and when not to bring up the serious stuff. Right now just didn't seem like the time and we both felt that.

I stole a quick glance at myself in the mirror and was startled to see a scar on my lip, "The fuck?" I exclaimed, moving closer and gingerly touching it. I guess I hadn't looked at my reflection in a while cuz this didn't even look new.

Red came up to me, "What?" I emphatically pointed at the mark, and she just smiled, "Oh, yeah, you got that from when you ran into that thing when we were gettin' out of the Q.Z." She said it so nonchalantly.

"And you just decided not to tell me this? I look like a fucking Russian mafia boss!" I rubbed at it gently as if that would make it go away.

She rolled her eyes at me, "You look totally fine. Everyone's got scars nowadays, and actually considering all the shit we've been through you look pretty fuckin' good." I groaned audibly in frustration and pouted, which just made her lightly punch my arm, "Shut up, if anything it just makes you seem tougher. And you needed that, cuz otherwise you seem like a total pussy." She backed away from me in preparation for my response, but I just sighed dejectedly.

I ran my palm down my face briefly, moving to unpack my own stuff, "God I hate you sometimes." I didn't even realize it but I was smiling slightly. I just couldn't believe that this was really happening – that we had made it here and that it wasn't overrun, that we could even be having this playful banter without fear of a clicker popping up out of the shadows. It almost seemed like a dream that I was terrified to wake up from.

Red started to walk toward the door, elbowing my back as she passed by, "Love you too."

"Where are you going?"

She stopped mid-step at my question, "To go see this Raleigh guy. Figured I should just get it over with." I nodded in understanding and she waved vaguely at me in goodbye before disappearing out of sight.


	9. A Way To Go

Living in Warwick proved to be a pretty mixed bag, but in general, it was good. I got to eat on a regular basis and get used to the three meals of the day again, I could shower regularly so I wasn't too gross anymore, I had an actually comfortable bed for the first time in what felt like forever, and I usually felt safe there. You usually got assigned some type of job that would vary depending on the day, then you'd pick two days when you didn't want to do anything. My choice kinda varied depending on how I felt. The jobs were basic things, like guarding on the wall, helping with the crops (if you were good enough, which I wasn't), cooking food, keeping the place relatively clean, or taking inventory on storage. Some people also had to go outside the walls. What for, I didn't know, but they always left with guns in their hands and they'd come back with considerably less bullets than before. Sometimes they even came back with less people. It was weird and unsettling.

Red's meeting with Raleigh was brief and apparently more informal than she had expected. She said that the guy seemed kind of cocky and self-centered, but that was just an initial vibe. Her exact words were "He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow", a saying so goddamn southern I couldn't help but make fun of her for it for days on end.

Raleigh thankfully wasn't some enigmatic overseer who thought that he was too good to hang around his subjects or anything like that – nope, I saw him all over the place. He ate in the cafeteria like everyone else and seemed mildly acquainted with most people, though he tended to stick around a select few who I assumed were old friends, maybe actually being indigenous from Warwick before the outbreak like he was. He kind of scared me though and I never tried to approach him. He had a shaved head that kinda resembled a military buzz cut, and he was stocky, seeming a bit like an iron wall. I had a feeling if I shoved his chest as hard as I could he wouldn't even sway.

Movie nights were in fact a thing. The day we arrived was, as we discovered, a Tuesday, and sure enough, on the following Friday, an excited Clarice dragged us off to the library. It wasn't used for library stuff anymore although there were books still scattered around that you could read, now it was sort of a makeshift armory for whatever weapons they had scrounged up, lodging for some people, a storage area, and since it was near the wall some people were actually working on making it into a sort of watch tower for additional defense, but that was barely even getting started. We watched cheesy movies like the first Jaws and a couple run-of-the-mill slasher flicks, but oh my God did it feel so fucking awesome to just sit down and _watch_ a goddamn _movie_. It was so oddly liberating. No matter the context of what was happening on the screen, I always had vague traces of a smile on my face whenever that projector was running. Red did too, so I wasn't totally alone.

The bar that Finn had pointed out in our initial tour turned out to be one of Red and I's primary hang out spots. A fellow resident there (I guess we were classified as residents now, which was sort of weird) named Charlie had been the one playing the guitar that first time, which he did whenever he didn't have work to do. It was almost like an unspoken job of his – because whenever he started strumming he had the instant attention of everyone in hearing range, and the air got mutually lighter as we all simultaneously remembered what things used to be like without having much control over it. Not many people knew how to play musical instruments nowadays, or if they did, the tools obviously weren't on hand. Apparently Charlie hadn't let his guitar out of his sight since the outbreak started, which at first seemed really dumb but proved to be an ultimate spirit booster when things got rough. He was a pretty cool guy, and I'd chat with him if I ever saw him around town.

Warwick was full of interesting people, so much so that it was almost overwhelming. I met someone knew every day, but it was like every time I learned a name I saw another totally new face. Whenever I had wall duty there was also usually another person stuck with the same job – a girl named Carmen. From what I could tell she seemed a bit gun crazy, toting around a SMG everywhere she went. Everyone else had basic pistols and rifles, maybe a shotgun, never something like that. She wore a dog tag and her hair was cut pretty short, that and the fact her posture straightened almost instinctively whenever Raleigh came around let me infer she had been in the army once. That'd explain the gun anyway. We passed the occasionally boring time on the wall by swapping stories or telling shitty jokes. Sometimes when our allotted work hours were finished we'd just continue our conversation but move it to the bar.

I spent some of my spare time with Finn, too, usually with Red along with us. He was very passionate about throwing darts, as it were, and he always challenged me to games in the corner of the bar. After losing a dozen times and having to deal with his over-the-top gloating which never really offended me, I just dubbed him the champion and stopped trying. Red gave him a run for his money though and it was always interesting to watch their banter as they played.

Clarice and Red were basically joined at the hip. It made sense, I mean they sure had a lot of catching up to do, but it was as if I could almost never get Red alone except for when night finally fell and we went to sleep. It wasn't a problem, necessarily, I didn't feel like I _needed_ one-on-one time with her, it was just what I had gotten used to. There wasn't usually anyone else to pull us apart, _we_ were supposed to be the inseparable ones. I'd like to say that I wasn't jealous of a goddamn sixteen year old (yeah, she's sixteen), but if I'm being totally honest I can't say that with 100% certainty. I didn't let it bother me though. Red was happier than I had seen her in a long time. When she was with her cousin they were almost always smiling or laughing, it was sweet.

Personally, to me Clarice seemed a little... immature? I dunno, it's hard to explain, but I had a feeling that she had been in Warwick for just a bit too long and had gotten too accustomed to the way things were there. She had forgotten how hard it was outside these confining walls, despite the fact that she had clearly lost many people in her life. She acted like the rest of the world wasn't totally destroyed, the way she talked about clothes and her hair, or read magazines with her friends, even having gossip within her social circle that she'd relay to Red, who in turn informed me. If anything we just kinda found it funny. Clarice actually had to attend school when she wasn't doing her mandatory jobs – (which usually consisted of farming, since she was the only one there who had actually grown up on a real farm) they had a _real_ school there. It apparently taught basic stuff like English and math along with survival skills in case things ever went sour, which was probably the best way to go about things in the education department.

Clarice didn't really talk to me much. It wasn't anything personal, our paths just didn't individually cross very often. If we were around each other, Red was too, and Clarice just stuck to her. Sometimes we would have wall duty together, but not often at all. It was then that I got to see how well she held a gun, and it was surprisingly not as steady as I would've assumed. She held it like I usually held firearms – with uncertainty and slight unwillingness. I wondered if she just preferred close range or if she didn't like combat at all.

Clarice seemed... popular? The social hierarchy of her school obviously didn't resemble what it used to be back in my day, but it was still there. She had a lot of friends, it seemed. Whenever I'd see her around she was always talking to some other teenager, laughing, just seeming like an overall normal kid – which was weird to see. Some of the really young kids that I'd see almost seemed constantly happy. Hell, for all I knew they may have been born there. I saw one mother holding a baby at point, basically a newborn. It had been at least five years since I'd seen one of those not in tears.

You got used to living in Warwick really quick – learned the schedules, the duties, the rules. You established yourself there, made friends, kind of started to get good and settled. I remember one day, when it started pouring rain, I just sat in Red and I's room and read a book next to the window, listening to the pattering of the drops on the nearby awning a floor down. It felt normal. It felt like I was back in my old apartment. It felt like I was safe, and it was amazingly relieving. When I glanced outside I saw kids playing in the rain, with their mildly-concerned parents halfheartedly persuading them to get indoors. Sometimes Red and I would pull all-nighters together, playing cards or just talking for hours about the most random things we could think of until we passed out.

From what I could tell though, or rather from what I was _told_ , infection within the walls wasn't much of a problem. The infectious spores only tended to grow and flourish in cities, sewers, or dank areas. The people here knew that and, although it may have been totally safe, never ever went into their basements for fear of accidentally inhaling some of the deadly, airborne fuckers without even knowing. I guess it wasn't bad to be overly-cautious, especially now.

I believed that for a while. The only thing that really got my nerves going was the thing where a group would leave the walls and come back a while later with less people. Sometimes, though not frequently, a person would come back wounded, and would be greeted by Raleigh before being promptly brought somewhere else. I didn't know what it was for. If they had gotten infected I didn't think that anyone would bring them willingly back inside the perimeter, but most of the time, I didn't see the injured person again for a good while, if ever.

It was only until something happened one day that started to make my faith in Warwick's security waver a little.

It was kind of late on a Friday night. Red and I had both decided to skip out on the movie on account of an overly crowded library and a disinterest in the particular one they were showing. I don't remember exactly what it was but we had seen it twice already, so we didn't feel the need to go again. Red was back in our room, alone, probably reading or something. Clarice had gone to the movie with a group of her numerous friends, and I was just coming back from a brief sit-in at the bar, heading home. It seems a bit weird calling it "home", but I guess that was what it was at the time. We had been there for about a month and a half – definitely the longest we had stayed stationary since the Q.Z.

The streets were basically empty, and pretty dark. There were streetlights but they weren't powered. People improvised though and there were scattered oil lanterns hanging from walls here and there. I could vaguely see the dim light in our room through the window – the mansion at the very end of the slightly lengthy street I was on. I passed a few houses, hearing muffled chatter from inside, occasional laughter even.

My leisurely stroll was interrupted unexpectedly when there was a shout from within a small ranch house to my left. It stopped me in my tracks, brow furrowing, unable to tell if it was harmless or if significant. Either way my hand shot to my hip immediately, where I still kept my Swiss army knife no matter the circumstances or how safe I thought I was. I stood still for a few lingering seconds, waiting, but nothing else happened. Dismissing it as nothing, I kept going, only to hear something fall over hard from inside, and glass shattering. Now I was paying attention.

I didn't want to barge into this person's house in case they might've just accidentally knocked over a bottle or whatever, but what if shit was going down in there? Nobody else was around to hear, I should help. I took a step closer to the door in spontaneous determination before my mental conflict halted me again. I did unsheathe the knife though, holding it tightly in my hand.

It was then that I heard the gunshot, and that was enough to send me immediately forward, tugging open the knob without hesitation -

– only to be almost knocked over by a dude falling backwards straight towards me. I barely managed to jump out of the way, at first confused as to why he just randomly collapsed, but understanding a split second later when I noticed that he had been pushed. A Runner, recently turned from what I could tell, was rabidly coming after him. I recognized the guy as one of Raleigh's cohorts, but I didn't know his name. A gun was held in his hand, so that explained things a bit.

The Runner thankfully didn't seem to notice me, focused on its current target, and instead lunged on top of him. His gun was knocked out of his hand as he used them both to keep its teeth from reaching its flesh. I quickly moved and slammed my blade into the back of its head, making its body go limp and fall on top of Raleigh's cohort. The sizable guy quickly shoved the fresh corpse off of himself, trying to catch his breath. I allowed a quick glance inside the house these two emerged from, to check for any more Runners, but I didn't see anything. My shoulders untensed slightly.

I extended my hand down to him, which he gratefully took, getting to his feet quickly. He brushed himself off and quickly scanned his limbs, presumably for bites, before bending over and retrieving his gun. As he holstered it, we locked eyes, and he spoke breathlessly.

"Jesus, didn't know I had a guardian angel." He shot me a smile, which I weakly returned, wiping my knife's blade briefly on my pant leg, "Hopkins." He gestured to himself as an introduction. Looking at the body now on the street, he turned it over with his foot so that it was face-up, "This here used to be Pete..." He jutted a thumb in the direction of the recently opened door, "... and the other one I downed in there was his kid, Doug, I think his name was."

I just slowly sheathed my blade again and took a couple deep breaths, "Colleen." Finding myself abruptly full of questions, I struggled to pick one, "What the hell happened?"

He knelt down next to Pete, examining him, "Um... well..." He looked up at me, and I could tell that his hesitation was from his uncertainty on whether or not he was even allowed to tell me anything. I guess he considered the fact that I had just saved his life, though, because he did answer, "... Doug back there went out yesterday on a supply run with a couple of the other guys. They said that they had a little spat with some infected, but that everyone was fine." He stood back up, sighing, "Doug must've hid it." He ran his palm down his face, "Ahh, you stupid fuckin' kid..." He said, no anger actually in his voice.

My brow furrowed, "What about Pete, though?" I briefly looked up and down the street, which was still totally empty despite that gunshot. I guess people may have just assumed it was someone on the wall. The library, which housed basically everyone in town on Friday nights, was relatively far from here, so they might not have heard it at all.

I watched as Hopkins went inside the small ranch and tugged out the body of a rather young man, shot directly through the forehead, "Pete has always been a big ole' softy. He used to live here, before everything went down." He set Doug's body down next to his father's, "Guy had a big family – nice wife, five good kids, little brother who lived with 'im."

I waited for him to elaborate until my patience wore thin, even though I knew the most likely answer to the question I was about to ask, "...And where are they?"

He frowned bitterly, "He lost them real early on – before we actually got the wall up, things were crazy here. Lotta good people died during those first few weeks. Lotta 'em left to try and go to one of those 'quarantine zones'. Raleigh, Pete, his family, me and some others didn't follow the evacuation notice and just stayed put. Turned out to be better in the long run, if ya ask me." He scratched at the back of his neck, "I think Doug came home, hid his bite, turned earlier today, and Petey just couldn't kill his kid." He pointed to Pete's belt, where a pistol was that I hadn't noticed, "I mean, lookit that. He had a gun, just didn't use it. Doug was all this guy had."

My chest tightened. The situation he described was all-too-familiar, and I just felt such an abrupt, intense rush of emotions it almost physically jostled me. He didn't seem to notice. He was too immersed in his own thoughts, as he bent over and gently closed the corpse's eyes.

He wiped some blood off of his face that had come from Pete when I stabbed his head, "Alright, well, thanks Colleen. You seriously saved my ass. I owe you a drink, sweetheart, okay? And I ain't takin' no for an answer." He was too immersed in his own thoughts to notice my inability to respond, thankfully, "I'm gonna go break the news to Raleigh. Pete and him go way back... I'll see ya 'round." With that, he quickly walked off.

I felt frozen to my spot. He had just left the bodies here. I knew there was a community graveyard in town, though I personally hadn't gone there. Pete and Doug were gonna be put there, I assumed. My chest sank as I looked down at the father and son. Hopkins hadn't meant to, but their hands were resting in a way that made it look as if they were reaching toward one another. Like they didn't want to be apart, even in death. Suddenly feeling my composure dwindling at a scarily fast rate, I shook my head back and forth, cleared my throat, and turned around – heading back home.

The whole mansion was totally empty, literally everyone at either the bar, library, or somewhere else. This was the first time I'd ever seen it like this. I half-expected to find Red not there either, but when I walked upstairs and into our room, she sat cross-legged on top of her bed with a book in hand. She looked at me as I walked in and shot me a smile. I barely managed to return it at that moment. My chest still ached, a sort of dull but lasting pain. It was familiar. A horrible kind of familiar.

"Hey," She spoke up, looking back toward the book again instead of at me, "Done at the bar? You were gone a while." I just nodded, taking off my jacket and throwing it onto my mattress. I emit a heavy sigh that just reeked of emotional drainage. She noticed it, looking up at me with a raised eyebrow. She quickly scanned me up and down, her eyes stopping on my mid-thigh, "Whoa whoa whoa, there," She quickly got to her feet, approaching me, book tossed to her bed, forgotten, "You've got blood on you, the fuck happened?" Her blatant concern was endearing.

I ran my fingers through my hair briefly before gripping tightly at my scalp, "On my way here, there was a..." I closed my eyes for a few seconds, "...I saved one of Raleigh's guys from a Runner." I walked over to the end table next to my bed, tracing along the spines of the small pile of books there.

"Wait, what?!" She was at my heels, "What do you mean? Did you go outside the walls or something, cuz you shouldn't go out there without-"

"-No, I didn't. It was in town, one of the ranches." My eyes moved down to the wood of the table and I drummed my fingers against it absentmindedly, for some reason not wanting to make even slight eye contact with Red. I felt very... weak at that moment. Very full of emotion. Too much so. It made me feel unstable. I hated that.

Whatever questions I answered were surely just raising more, "A ranch? There were infected inside the walls?"

"Yeah. Two Runners."

"You killed two Runners?" She sounded sort of impressed.

I looked up – out the window, and I could still slightly see the two bodies in the distance. Three men started to approach them, and from the distance I couldn't tell if one of them was Hopkins – but I had a feeling. It'd make sense if he brought back Raleigh. I watched the scene. One of them knelt down next to the corpses, examining them, "Nope. Only one. Raleigh's guy got the other." I was really monotone. It was the only way I could keep the growing distress out of my voice.

"Wha- how did they get past the perimeter?"

I exhaled shakily as the guys started to lift up and begin to move the bodies, "Apparently one of them went outside the walls for something yesterday, got bit, hid it then came back. The other one was his dad... he couldn't shoot his kid, so he got infected too. Nobody found out until Raleigh's dude went inside to check on them, I guess." My hands clenched into fists.

Red paused, as if processing the information, "Seriously?" I wasn't sure why she was so confused about it. I mean, it was sort of unlikely, but not implausible. Shit happens, mistakes are made, people make dumb decisions. Red knew that, of all people. She scoffed slightly, "Jesus, _that's_ a way to go." She took a few steps away from me.

Something inside of me twinged slightly with minor frustration, and for the first time since I walked in, I turned around and made direct eye contact with her, "How so?"

She spun on her heel and walked back toward her bed, looking like she was ready to pick her book back up and keep reading, but I had a creeping feeling this conversation wasn't going to end so soon, "Well, c'mon, you make it through all of this world's shit only to die cuz you didn't have the balls to shoot just another Runner?" She shrugged slightly, but she sounded pretty certain, "Seems stupid to me, that's all."

I could tell by the way she was talking that she planned on using that last statement as an opportunity to change the topic, but I wasn't dropping this. I retorted with my usual go-to tactics for most things: sarcasm, "Right, because it's so easy to shoot someone you care about straight in the face." My words caught her attention, and so did my tone. It was sarcastic, yeah, but there was spite behind it, which was a new thing.

Red allowed a lengthy pause to spread across the room, our eyes meeting again, before responding with a dead set tone very different from the one she had mere seconds before, "Well it should be if you know that they'll kill you otherwise." She said that so bluntly, like it was one of the most basic facts of life and like she almost didn't understand how I couldn't know it.

I chuckled bitterly at her, feeling the urge to turn away again. I moved toward my backpack on the floor, as if to have an excuse for not looking at her. Lifting it up and onto my bed, I started to absentmindedly sort through it like I was looking for something, "Yep, survival of the fittest. As per usual."

Though I said that last part under my breath, she evidently caught it, "Don't act like it hasn't saved our asses on numerous occasions, Colleen." It sounded like she was getting a bit flustered too.

Right as I started to wonder where this was going to go, and right as I planned on backing off for fear of this turning into a fight – which we rarely, basically never had – in my falsified search through my bag I pushed aside a stray shirt and revealed... _it_ by accident. That was the absolute last thing I needed right then. Something snapped inside of me, it was tangible.

"God _damn_ it, Red, y'know sometimes it seems like you have the same amount of compassion as a fucking piece of wood. Can't you ever just _give_ a shit for once?" I was barely aware of what I was saying. Buried emotions that I had to consciously keep dormant at almost all times were gaining some newfound potency and resurfacing at an uncontrollable rate.

I pushed my bag over so that it was out of my sight, not knowing that it was still wide-open, just as Red scoffed lightly, "Is that seriously what you think of me? That I 'don't give a shit'?" She sounded mad. Really mad. Normally that would have startled me, made me change my tune or start to back off, but at that moment I couldn't have cared less.

I even turned around to face her – not surprised to see her brow starting to furrow and anger starting to dominate her expression, "Last time I checked you weren't deaf." I crossed my arms and allowed myself to glare. Jesus, I couldn't even remember the last time I glared at Red in legitimate anger. It was almost always playful or insincere. Still though, I wasn't fazed at the time.

She buried her hand in her hair, something she tended to do when she was frustrated, seeming really conflicted as to what was happening. It wasn't in Red's nature to back down from any type of fight, but this was different. We didn't fight. And she seemed to be genuinely confused as to why we were even getting into this argument, "What the hell is wrong with you? Did I do something wrong?" I could tell she had decided to try to calm this situation down.

But I just wasn't having it. I didn't know why, but I seriously was unable to reign in my abruptly acquired anger, and it was fueling absolutely everything I was saying at that moment, "I just can't _believe_ how you don't think it'd be hard to shoot someone infected if you really care about them! I mean, do you hear yourself?!" My clear inability to hold in all of this misguided rage just prevented her attempts at diffusing this.

She just gave a slight laugh of irony, "Well yeah, since apparently I'm not deaf." I rolled my eyes at her. Her sassiness started to fade again though, wanting to keep things civil, evidently, "They're going to die anyway. They'll suffer otherwise, it's for the best and they should be aware of that." She had adopted her 'I-want-you-to-take-what-I-say-to-heart' tone which she only used when things were really serious to her. I guess this was.

In hindsight, I seemed literally incapable of rational thinking at that moment, my actions and my words just being fueled by my fury that even I barely understood at that moment, "Right, right, like how you shot Hank without so much as a fucking second glance, like some goddamn horse with a busted leg that you have to take out back!"

That had impact. We hadn't once, not _once_ mentioned Hank since what happened, let alone the circumstances of his death, especially not the fact that Red had been the one to shoot him. Everything I was saying was just rattling the both of us intensely. If I hadn't been so immersed in my own emotional distress, I would have addressed my mistake. I know that I shouldn't have said that, but it was already out there. I had a feeling that her temper was thinning.

"We had talked about it before. He _said_ that he wanted me to shoot him, no matter what came out of his mouth or what he did to dissuade me." She was speaking sort of quietly.

That didn't even faze me although it was totally new information. This rage that I was feeling was just coming from an entirely different source, anger that I couldn't really take out, that I hadn't been _able_ to take out for such long years of it festering, "What if it was me, huh?! What would you do then?!" I stepped closer to her to emphasize what I was saying, but I could tell from Red's face that it was already packing quite a punch, "Just put the fucking barrel of the gun right between my eyes, pull the trigger then be on your merry way?!"

I felt it ebbing. The anger. It was becoming what it really was. I tried desperately to not let it show, but it was getting nearly impossible with every passing second. I had rattled Red a lot, also confusing her, or so I inferred from her expression.

She saw through me still, that hadn't changed. It was like I was fucking transparent to her, "Colleen..." She spoke cautiously, "...what is this really about? Is it Hank? Are you mad at me?" She just so desperately wanted to know what was actually wrong with me. What my actual motivations were, and why I was acting like this with seemingly no proper provocation.

I just groaned in frustration and turned from her again, walking to the other side of the room – away from her. It wasn't a large distance but it aggravated me when she followed every step of the way. Subconsciously I think that I was scared of her impeccable ability to read me. I just didn't want her to see it. To see why this was happening. I glanced briefly around the room without noticing and spotted _it_ on my bed. It had fallen out of my bag. Now it was just sitting there, out in the open. Part of me almost lunged at it on instinct, ready to shove it back into my pack, but I stayed put. I didn't want her to notice it too. I didn't want her to catch on.

There was a dragging pause so heavy with tension I felt like I was sinking into the floor. The longer it lasted, the more the anger faded away. I didn't want it to. For the moment, it was keeping all of the pains of reality at bay.

What she said next made my stomach drop so quickly I almost gagged.

"...Is it Violet?" She spoke with caution that she didn't seem to understand. She had no idea what even _saying_ that name did to me. It prompted a physical reaction and I froze, actually feeling paralyzed, like I couldn't move if I tried. She must have noticed, but that didn't stop her, "I know that she..."

 _Stop. Please stop._ I remember thinking to myself desperately as I clenched my eyes shut, but I couldn't say it aloud. My lips parted ever so slightly, but nothing would come out.

"...you told me about her getting infected, remember?" My throat tightened. I couldn't talk about it. I shouldn't. It hurt already. _So_ badly, "You were kinda drunk."

My arms were still crossed and I tightened my grip on myself, knuckles white, trying _so_ hard to keep it together. The last thing I wanted to do was break down. I didn't want to show her that side of me. She had never seen it, not once in the going on seven years that I'd known her. I may have teared up on occasion, but she had never caught me when I was really at my worst. Nobody had. I would've liked to keep it that way, but at that moment, as my lip started to quiver and my eyes started to burn, I doubted my ability to control that.

She took a step closer. Her voice was soft now, cautious and sincere, a lot different than it had been before, "I'm not trying to sound like some heartless asshole, Colleen, I'm trying to be reasonable..." Looking back on it, she genuinely was trying to understand me more. And she had no way of knowing how much this was killing me, "...I know I don't know shit about whatever happened with that whole thing, but clearly-"

I needed to stop her. I can't explain it, but the pain that I felt was actually physical, agonizing, making every nerve in my body ache and my head throb like I had one of the worst migraines on the planet. Forcing my inability to move out of me with conscious, incredible amounts of effort, I turned around before she could finish whatever she planned on saying and I got right in her face, managing a glare.

When Red saw my expression, her jaw dropped and she immediately stopped her words. I can only imagined what I must've looked like then, on the verge of tears, visibly about to totally lose it, anger still trying to remain in my persona despite the fact it was clearly contrived.

"-You're right; you don't know _shit_." I spoke the word through clenched teeth, lip still quivering. Red 's eyes had widened at the sight of my intense emotional distress, "About me, or about Viole-" My voice broke. I couldn't do it. I couldn't say her name. There was no way. I swallowed hard to try and get rid of the lump in my throat. It didn't work.

I couldn't do this, couldn't cope – the dam that had been holding back a tidal wave of tears had sprung a leak as soon as Red said that name, making it moments from bursting. I could feel it coming. I didn't want her to see. Although I had nowhere else to go really, I needed to get away from her – find somewhere to be relatively alone. Realizing this, I made a beeline for the door, needing to leave _her_ sight at the very least.

Before I could get there, Red stopped me by grabbing my wrist. I had slightly expected her to, but her grip was stronger than I would've anticipated and I just didn't have the strength – emotional or physical – to break out of it. I almost lost it as soon as she made contact with me, but I held it together with the last reserves of willpower I managed to have and turned again to lock eyes with her, shaking her off me.

Glaring so fiercely – rage spontaneously restored – I saw Red jump a bit from surprise at my reacquired fury. As I spoke I was barely aware of what I was saying, where it was coming from or why I was saying it, it was just happening, "Imagine this: the person you care about most in the world just got bitten because of you. And now, after you just helplessly watch them writhe and suffer in _agony_ , they're literally asking you – _begging_ you to kill them. And you say you can't. You feel too weak. You tell them you need them, that you can't go on without them, but they're so far gone they barely even understand what you're saying, and with whatever strength they have left, they put a gun into your hand and guide it to their own goddamn forehead." At this point, tears were streaming down my cheeks, my voice shaking so much I was probably almost incoherent.

The only way I managed to keep going was by disassociating... _her_ from it, which only made speaking possible, not easy, "And you try to pull it away, you try to beg them to hold on, but you're crying too fucking hard to talk, and the last thing they say to you as they look you square in the face is 'Please, I don't want to tear you apart'. Then they're gone."

I started to shout between my tears, glad that nobody else was in the mansion that night because I had absolutely no control over my volume whatsoever when I was this crazy emotional, "Just like that, they're _fucking_ _gone_ and you _can't_ bring them back, you'll never see their smile, you'll never hear their voice, you'll never go on road trips, you'll never go to pet stores just to play with the puppies, never destroy the kitchen trying to bake a cake, never stay up all night drinking cheap wine and watching old re-runs, you'll never _fucking_ _see_ _them_ again and it's all your fault..." I felt something inside of me shatter, and a sob slammed into me like a brick wall. It was followed by a lot more, relentless as they painfully wracked my body, but I wasn't done.

"...you pull the trigger and it's too late, _she's_ _dead_ because of _you_ , she's..." I had fucked it up. I had made it about her again, but I couldn't help it, "...she's dead, and I killed her."

Red moved forward, wrapping me in her arms as I literally collapsed to the floor, falling to my knees with my face buried in my hands as I started to bawl more uncontrollably than I ever had before in my life, sounding so utterly shattered, broken beyond repair and vulnerable, "I killed her... I shot her..." I barely managed to choke out, "She's dead... I killed her..." Red started to soothingly rock me back and forth as I shook violently, "It's all my fault. I'm so sorry, Violet..."

Red tightened her grip protectively, speaking lowly into my ear, "Shh... it's okay."

It took a long time, but eventually, I think I actually passed out instead of calming down. I woke up the next morning alongside her in her bed, still wrapped tightly in her arms, with red puffy eyes and a hollow feeling in my chest.

I decided to choose this day to not work.


	10. Snagged

**Winter**

Winter came out of nowhere, it seemed. But that was New England for you. Literally it was as if one day, there were various colored leaves lingering on the trees and being peacefully blown around the streets, and the next it was a snowy wasteland. Despite having lived in this weather for years, sometimes it still surprised me. Since we didn't have weather people or daily forecasts anymore, obviously, it was more unpredictable than ever.

I realized quickly that the shitty jacket Red had shoved into my pack while we were fleeing the Q.Z wasn't enough to provide much of any proper protection from the cold, so I had to go borrow one from the like communal clothes place that Warwick had. It was like a mini Salvation Army, where people would bring clothes that they had found or drop off old ones that no longer fit them. It was sort of weird to go there – it felt like I was "shopping", kind of, even though no currency was exchanged or anything.

The nights were long and the weather was extremely harsh. I seriously felt like if Red and I hadn't gotten to Warwick before this winter had come in, we might've just died from hypothermia out in the wilderness somewhere. I almost forgot what it was like to look outside and not see snow coming from the sky. A lot of the regular jobs just seemed like a lower priority now, and the majority of us had to spend our time trying to shovel the goddamn snow into manageable piles so that you could walk around still. The crops all died, of course, so we were left to live off of the pretty substantial non-perishables that Warwick had stored up in case something like this happened. I noticed, though, that even though we had stuff to eat still, I guess Raleigh was uneasy about delving into our reserves, since more and more groups of people ventured outside the walls now. Usually (key word, _usually_ ) they came back with packs full of stuff instead of with wounds/less bullets, which was reassuring. They were just scavenging, right? I mean, what else would they be doing?

The days all sort of melded together and I quite nearly lost track of any sort of time. In fact, if there wasn't a regularly updated calender in the hallway of the house we stayed in, I wouldn't have even a slight idea of what month it was.

After that night when I came back from the bar, things were a little different between Red and I. Not by much – to any onlooker we seemed exactly how we normally would: joking, teasing, the usual. But they weren't there at night, when it was just the two of us up in our room. Although being indoors was far more preferable than roughing it outside, the insulation was pretty bad, so more often than not we wore our jackets to sleep. On the especially freezing nights we just slept in the same bed together to preserve our body heat, and even then we would both be shaking like leaves. I saw some of the first nearly physical conflicts happen over people fighting for the spare blankets. Red and I stayed out of it, assuming we could deal, but sometimes I regretted that decision.

I started to have trouble sleeping. It was almost like clockwork – I'd go to sleep with considerable effort and numerous failed attempts, then wake up not long after with a start, breathing rapidly. It would always disturb Red, sometimes to the point that she'd get up too, which made me feel terrible despite her insisting upon it not bothering her. I honestly don't remember what the dreams were about, but they were bad. Left me always trembling slightly, whether or not it was especially cold in the room. After those I rarely ever got back to sleep without help, so Red would usually just hold a conversation with me until I was lulled into a light slumber by the sounds of our gradually slurring voices – drowsiness overtaking us after a while. She got a haircut too, which was weird to me. Sure, she had gotten trims before back in the Q.Z, but this time she cut it so that it stopped around her mid-neck. It was just odd, having only ever seen her with her long hair tied back, or down all the way to her shoulders.

Unfortunately, reliving everything that had happened with Violet after I had spent so many years consciously burying it deep within the recesses of my psyche proved to be damaging. It wasn't just the nightmares, though, in general I would sometimes have to excuse myself from wherever I was to go and retreat to a place I could be alone, because I accidentally thought about her for too long and got all ferklempt. I had thought I had gotten past this – the intense grieving stage, the bereavement, the guilt – but that turned out to be untrue. It was all still there, I had just suppressed it. Acted like it wasn't happening. Did my very best to forget about her completely, which in hindsight was just absolutely impossible. How could I even _dream_ of being able to forget about someone who was _that_ important to me for _so_ long...?

Red and I's old attachment and bond had gotten fully restored and even a little bit stronger. After Clarice had showed up, I'll admit I felt a little like I had gotten put on the backburner, which was understandable. I think that, subconsciously, it bothered me more than I was letting myself believe, because when Red came back and returned to being around me as much as possible, it was like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders that I hadn't even known was there in the first place.

Although it was nearly impossible now to ever know the _real_ day that it was, considering all of the daylight savings, leap years, and other weird shit that had been forgotten because, well, apocalypse, you could make a pretty good guess most of the time. Warwick reminded me that it was trying really hard to have a semblance of how things used to be before the outbreak, and in order to do that it needed to at least try to celebrate the holidays.

Christmas hadn't ever been my favorite thing for a good chunk of my early life, only becoming fun and exciting when I was in my late teen years and early adulthood. Shortly after, the world fell apart, so yeah. Warwick went all out though. People hung wreathes around, mistletoe was scattered on a few doorways, someone attached little sleigh-bell things to the wind chime, and a few people resorted to using tinsel for insulation for the gaps underneath their front doors, which was both festive and resourceful. Charlie strummed classic Christmas tunes lazily whenever people were at the bar, which even started to serve eggnog for Christ's sake. The kids were psyched about it, too. Although they weren't likely to get presents considering the condition of the world, you couldn't deny that the holiday spirit was pretty contagious. Finn kept a fake Christmas tree that he had found in someone's basement, and he set it up in the library. It was a big event for the whole town as people decorated it, even strung it up with lights that we used the generator for. To this day, seeing that tree sparkle and twinkle with ornaments, tinsel and that star at the top was one of the most refreshing things I had ever see in my life.

Raleigh had been showing up less and less around town, I noticed. Normally I'd at least see him once a day, now it was really rare. Whenever he did show up, though, he seemed to be lacking something. Not a physical thing, I mean he seemed a little empty. I had next to no interactions with him, granted, but it was just a vibe that I got. When I talked to Red about it she agreed, and she used to have full on conversations with him. Also, according to Finn, Raleigh "liked Red's spunk". I had seen her have drinks with him and his closest buddies at the bar. I knew that it didn't concern me, and that I shouldn't be thinking much about it, but since he was the technical "leader" of the town and all, it had been reassuring to know he was involved – not some shadowy figure that hid behind closed doors.

Finn was the closest with Raleigh, at least out of everyone I personally knew. He was the town's sole long-distance smuggler, since he was the only one willing to venture out so far past the walls, and the only one who could somehow always manage to come back. Finn and I spent a substantial amount of time together, too, he was really easy to talk to, and now that he couldn't go anywhere on account of the weather conditions, he hung around the bar a lot. Coincidentally, I did too.

He wouldn't talk much about Raleigh. If I had to pick a word to describe it, he seemed a bit scared of him. Intimidated, at the very least. The only useful information he willingly gave up was when he was drunk. And it was scarce – hard to put together, but I managed. I desperately wanted to understand what was going on around Warwick.

From what I could gather, Raleigh was getting disorganized and coming unhinged. The added pressure of the snow was making it harder and harder to keep track of where he sent scavengers, and we were losing people with no way of finding out where they were. Our supplies were running low, a previous increase in population back in the summer made it harder to keep everyone warm, and things in general were just getting more and more hard to handle for him. He was doing his best, apparently, but Finn hinted at some questionable leadership choices that were causing tension amongst the other people sort of "in charge".

I didn't let this bother me, even though Red seemed pretty concerned about it. She had a bit more reason to be, because even in our short stay here (having only been at Warwick for about four months) she had managed to get quite a sway amongst the community here. It was mainly from her prominent, reassuring presence that just made people feel safe I guess. Not to mention she greatly helped wherever she could and had quickly formed a sort of rapport with Raleigh.

One day, two of Raleigh's guys came up to me on the street and nonchalantly explained that I was going to be heading outside the walls later. I was pretty rattled by this information, but they had walked off before I got the chance to ask any of my questions. I knew how it worked, simply by watching these groups leave some of the time. They seemed to gather by the main gate one by one over the course of like, half-an-hour at around noon. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to follow suit.

Lets just say Red wasn't pleased with the position I was put into. I tried to mention where I was going in a casual way, like it was nothing, but as usual she saw right through the ruse and got just as nervous as I was, if not more so. She herself hadn't been outside the walls since we arrived in Warwick, and she seemed very adamant on me being able to say the same. Unfortunately, my fears of consequences arising from disobeying a direct order surpassed those of whatever laid outside the safety this place provided. I had been in danger before, obviously, but it had just been a while as all. Ever since that encounter with the Runners from that ranch house, I hadn't even seen any infected in about a month and a half at that point.

I was accompanied by mainly a bunch of stocky, muscular guys who looked a bit less armed-to-the-teeth as I normally saw them. That reassured me, because from what I could tell they looked a lot more like they were suited up for a scavenging run instead of a firefight. Carmen was actually with me too, and she was the same as always – toting her SMG and lugging her large backpack, which she wore even around town. Knowing that she was there too put me a lot more at ease, but I refrained from mentioning that. On our actual way outside, as we headed past the main gates, I glanced over my shoulder to notice Clarice stuck with wall duty. Our eyes met but neither of us acknowledged the other in any way.

Thankfully, Carmen's sense of humor that was pleasantly cohesive with mine didn't fade even when we were potentially in danger. One of the guys in our group kept trying to be cool and give us like, military signals so that we didn't have to vocally communicate, and Carmen told me that everything he was trying to sign to us was just totally wrong. She had been a soldier before, she said, and a smug smile came to her face whenever this dude did one of his inaccurate gestures. It was moderately relieving to have that lightheartedness around, considering everyone else with us was dead serious about the situation (which we probably should've been too, but if you didn't take the chance to laugh once in a while you'd go fucking insane).

Surprisingly enough the little venture was pretty uneventful. There weren't any infected that spotted us, although I did notice some around – we didn't make enough noise for them to be alerted. There was a convenience store, pharmacy thing that we went into and found a decent amount of stuff in. Whether or not it'd actually be useful, I didn't even care, I just wanted to get back to Warwick so I could breathe without a tightness in my chest.

Unfortunately, our return didn't relieve me in the slightest. On our way back, we all nearly jumped out of our skins at the sounds of gunfire. A lot of it. Okay, if there were infected outside the walls, it was usually a one-shot kill and that was that. Now it sounded like goddamn assault rifles were being fired, which Warwick didn't even have on hand. After exchanging some brief worried looks with one another, we took off running. We weren't nearby, though, and the sprint there seemed like it took forever. Were we being attacked or something? Had someone hostile gotten inside the gates? My concern was starting to absolutely eat me alive at the thought of these mysterious assailants bursting straight into town and dropping survivors like flies. The image of Red being among the corpses made my throat clench up.

By the time Warwick was in view, the gunshots had died down and completely stopped. There was still a general sense of chaos lingering around though, I could feel it and I wasn't even there yet. Now we could sort of hear frantic shouts and hurried commands. My worry was actually managing to make me go faster than the others, it was as if it were physically propelling me like a goddamn motorboat. I got there first. And boy oh boy, was I greeted by a pleasant sight.

The entire ground seemed to be coated in a layer of blood and shell casings. Bodies were scattered about too, some with familiar faces, some not. The main gate had been literally _blown_ open, by what, I have no idea at all, and its doors now laid in pieces strewn around. It was probably irreparable unless built all over again from scratch. The corpses weren't strictly within the walls of Warwick, some were outside, but those were almost all ones that I couldn't recognize. Warwick got new people every now and then, yeah, but after being here for so long I could at the very least have a vague catalog of everyone's faces in my head.

I quickly entered, looking around frantically, for Finn, Clarice, hell, even Hopkins, but everything was too all over the place for me to pick their faces out of the crowd. And of course I was looking for Red. That's just a given. I could hear my heartbeat in my ears as the adrenaline coursed through me like blood, fear biting at my core tangibly, terrified that the next corpse I stepped over might be hers. If there was a firefight, you could bet your ass that Red would get involved without question. And it wasn't that I didn't have faith in her abilities to hold her own, or anything like that at all, it was just some of the bodies I noticed were those of the people who I personally considered the most hardened survivors here. I was right to be scared.

"Colleen?" Someone said my name over my shoulder and I was snapped out of my slight daze, but still pretty out of it. I knew that it wasn't Red, it was a guy that had spoken. I turned around to see Finn, looking thankfully no worse for wear – he had some blood splattered on his cheek but I could tell it wasn't his. He was out of breath and very frazzled looking, just like everyone else at the moment. It was sort of hard to hear him what with all of the commotion happening around us, but I managed.

He approached me and maneuvered us a bit to the side of the street – away from the craziness, "Sweet Jesus, you good?" He quickly scanned me up and down, not seeing any signs of injury, "Cool, alright, uh..." His eyes flitted to something behind me, presumably a person, because he gestured at whoever it was to give him a second, "...I don't have time to explain. Fuck, I don't even know what's happening right now. Just um... ask around, see if anyone needs help, yeah?" I had never seen him so jarred, it was weird. Understandable, of course, but weird nonetheless. I nodded a bit, since my overwhelming worry was still keeping me from vocal communication, and he clapped me on the shoulder before walking off.

I spun on my heel and resumed my desperate search for Red. Okay, I knew that she would most definitely have participated in this gun show, and if she was alive, where the hell was she? From what I had seen, there were only like three people in Warwick that had red hair, so I just scanned around for that – both amongst the survivors and the dead bodies. As my head swiveled on my neck so frantically it almost hurt, I spotted something in a nearby snow bank that I hadn't before. One of the fresh corpses had fallen there face down, blood tainting the otherwise pure snow. They were wearing a hat so I couldn't judge the length of their red hair from my distance, which just made things even more terrifying. That might be her. Oh _God_ what if that was her? Feeling the panic starting to come on a bit too strong for me to reign in, I rushed to it, breath getting uneven and shallow. I reached forward, ready to grab the shoulder of this mystery person to flip them over, but I hesitated.

I wouldn't be able to deal if she died. There was just no way, and I knew that. The possibility of this being her was just automatically so awful that my denial suppressed it, but not all the way. If I flipped this body over and saw Red's face, I wouldn't be able to cope. I was still emotionally reeling from Violet, and that had been seven years prior.

Head starting to throb, I rubbed at my temples with my fingers and tried to calm myself down, subconsciously deciding not to reveal this corpse's face until I was a bit more stable. I let myself listen to the jumbled conversations of the other Warwick survivors. People were questioning what the hell had gone wrong, others were seeking medical aid, and of course there were those that were looking for their loved ones frantically – their concern almost making them incoherent.

I looked up to actually examine the scene and it was heart wrenching. I knew a lot of these people. There were families here, parents, aunts, uncles. One of the bodies that I recognized was a mother of three kids. Jesus I wouldn't want to be the one to deliver _that_ news. Upon further investigation I spotted a few cautious children poking their heads out of windows, only to be hastily scolded not to look and to get back inside.

It was then that I picked a voice out of the crowd, one that was familiar, but hard to pinpoint because it was one amongst so many others. They were asking frantic, worried questions, which was probably what I would've been doing had I been able to speak. It was description stuff, like "they're about this tall", and, "brown hair, long". I didn't want to dive headfirst into the sea of people, so I just stood kind of on the outer edge of the cluster and looked around.

I saw a flash of orange. It was brief, but notable. My heart skipped a beat and my next breath got caught in my throat. Abruptly regaining my speech, I spoke up in a near-shout so that I may be heard by her, "Red?!" My voice shook, as did my hands (both from cold and intense fear).

It only took a few, dragging seconds – though it felt like years – for Red to burst from the side of the crowd and immediately spot me. Our relief was mutual and shown clearly in our expressions. She rushed towards me and hugged me so tight it almost hurt, a gesture I immediately returned, finally feeling like I could breathe now. It was brief, but greatly reassuring. I felt like things were okay. For a few, lingering moments, that is.

She released me first, scanning me for wounds of some kind while I did the same to her. She seemed totally untouched, not even a speck of blood anywhere on her, "Goddamn it Colleen don't you ever fuckin' scare me like that again." She said, sounding out of breath herself.

I scoffed at her, "Bitch how do you think I feel?" She allowed herself to smile and a grin of pure, utter relief came to my face too.

We didn't have time for our usual banter that would've happened to sort of calm both of us down after such an emotionally driven, panic-inducing moment, because Red's worry seemed to engulf her persona all over again in the blink of an eye. She slapped the side of her head as if abruptly remembering something and I raised an eyebrow at her.

I watched in confusion as she looked over her shoulder at the crowd that was surprisingly enough dying down a bit and dispersing, " _Fuck_ where is she?!" For a second I didn't know who she was talking about, but I'm thankful I didn't ask because I would've seemed like an asshole for forgetting. Clarice had presumably yet to be found, "She was on wall duty, right?" I nodded, and this confirmed information only seemed to further dismay her, " _Christ_ that was the first place to get hit... girl can't shoot for shit either, _fuck_."

Just as I was about to try and rationalize the situation and ease her nerves, (although truthfully it made perfect sense why she was scared) Hopkins jogged over to us, looking very rushed and hectic. His shoulder was tied around with some type of fabric and blood was already soaking through the makeshift bandage. The color was drained out of his skin and he was in a cold sweat. Damn he did _not_ look good.

"Red, hey, c'mon, Raleigh needs to talk to everybody." He took pauses in between his words to breathe, almost like if he didn't he'd just forget to and pass out.

I knew that he just wanted her, but honestly I wasn't very willing to let her out of my sight after the shit that just happened. I wondered if the feeling was mutual.

Red didn't seem to be fazed by what he was saying at all, "I gotta look for Clare, man, I ain't got no time for some fuckin' conference bullshit." Jesus her accent was showing through a lot. She was really upset. She waved her hand at him dismissively, sass still coming on strong despite the situation. I also tended to forget that she called Clarice that and I almost thought she was referring to someone else. I think it was something reserved for friends and family, though, so I never really used the nickname.

"Well, where was she before they got in?" He asked. I so wished that I knew who "they" were but I refrained from asking. Did I actually want to know? Part of me was a bit scared of what the answer may be.

Red fiddled with the bracelet tied on her wrist, something I hadn't seen her do for a while, but it showed me just how nervous she was, "Wall duty."

Hopkins's face fell instantly, which in turn made Red and I tense up, before he said in a very set tone, "You need to come with me." I could tell he wasn't taking no for an answer, but again, I didn't want to be separated from Red right after our reunion.

Thankfully she shared my mindset, because she reached over and clasped my hand determinedly, "Colleen's comin' too. No fussin', neither." I gently tightened my grip on her to show my appreciation and her eyes flitted to me for a second.

Hopkins seemed too exhausted to even try to protest this and just nodded weakly, beckoning us along with him as he jogged down the street. Red released me and was at his heels. He stopped at the town's old post office that was a fair distance from the main gate and headed inside, us following without question.

I was greeted by a slightly intimidating sight – a smallish room filled with some of the more notably standoffish survivors in Warwick, including Raleigh. Carmen and Finn were there too, sort of standing out amongst the others because of the fact I knew they weren't like these people. Carmen had put on a sort of tough face though, as if to better fit in. She noticed me and gave me a little nod but didn't allow herself to smile. I guessed that was appropriate considering the circumstances of this meeting. Everyone was arguing at varying volumes and our entrance didn't stop them in the slightest. In fact it seemed like Carmen was the only one who noticed us at all. Not even Finn looked our way. I seriously felt like I didn't belong there.

It was impossible not to eavesdrop on what was being said but it was also nearly impossible to understand what the fuck anyone was talking about, "Well we can't just sit here and wait for them to-"

"-We _aren't_ staging a counterattack, we don't have the firepower or manpower to-"

"-You're saying you _don't_ want to retaliate for this?! We lost dozens of people out there, and if-"

"-Who the _fuck_ attacked us?!" Red piped up at a volume far surpassing everyone else's, wanting to be heard. She sounded really mad and I understood that emotion. I was kinda pissed off too. I mean, if Raleigh knew that something like this was even slightly capable of happening, he should've told people. Hell, who knows how many lives that might've saved if the others had just gotten a bit more of a heads-up?

A silence spread around after her words. What, were we both just like super out of the loop? I mean, yeah, compared to everyone else in the room we were the newbies, but still. We'd been there for a pretty good while, shouldn't we know that such a large-scale, devastating attack could occur? Had this happened before? No... no, judging by the reactions of people like Finn, who had been there a long time, I doubted this was something they'd dealt with before.

Finally, after a very lingering, bordering on awkward pause, one of the more taciturn stocky dudes in the room piped up in a voice that almost shook the ground at our feet it was so deep, "Fireflies."

 _What?_ Seriously? I had sort of assumed it was like, bandits or something – people that wanted to raid us for our supplies, not an organized, established group of actually trained in combat people with _real_ guns and _real_ explosives. No wonder it was such a goddamn massacre out there, the Fireflies were the real deal, and we were just scrounging up whatever we could find from abandoned buildings or cars on the road.

Honestly, I wasn't an expert on what the Fireflies were even about. All I knew was that the soldiers didn't like them, and they didn't like the soldiers. Back at the Q.Z there were a few little skirmishes that I can remember, but I didn't actually see any firsthand. The soldiers called them "rebels", and that's one of the more PG-rated names they tended to use. They had an ultimate goal that I didn't remember because I just didn't care, but Red knew more about them than I did. She had been friends with a few. They weren't bad people, I knew that much, I mean the soldiers were dicks so I totally understand why you'd want to pump them with lead or blow them up. So then why on earth were they attacking a little settlement of survivors just trying to get by? We didn't have like, endless caches of food all over the damn place, especially not now – in Winter. We had virtually nothing that they would want, from what I could see at least, so what the hell?

I was glad to see that Red was just as baffled as I was, "Why the _fuck_ are the Fireflies attackin' _us_?! They're political, they go fer and G.I Joes, not places like this!" Now that she mentioned it, I had heard of some Firefly uprisings actually overtaking entire . They were really a force to be reckoned with and I most certainly did not want to get involved in any sort of conflict with them. Unfortunately, I had a feeling that I was inadvertently their enemy just because I lived in Warwick.

Finn took a step closer to her, looking a bit apologetic. Why would he be apologetic? Did he know this might happen too? "This isn't the first um... _altercation_ we've had with the Fireflies, Red." Before she could express her confusion, which I'm sure she still had because mine hadn't faded at all, Finn kept talking, "But this is definitely the first time they've actually gotten _through_ the walls-"

"-And the first time they've taken hostages." Hopkins interrupted him mid-sentence. Finn had sounded like his ultimate goal was to calm Red down a bit and ease her prominent nerves, but Hopkins seemed like he just wanted to get all of the information out there so we could process it all at once instead of in pieces. I wasn't sure which person's efforts I agreed with or appreciated more.

Red was so instantaneously distraught. It was unlike I'd ever seen her before as she turned her full attention to Hopkins, "Fuckin' _what?!_ Hostages?! What- they- why- _what?!_ " I understood why she seemed so scared. With Clarice being missing and having not seen her body anywhere amongst the corpses, the only plausible option was that she had been taken hostage.

This concept was absolutely preposterous to me. So, the Fireflies, an organized group of militarily trained people with a real political agenda, decided to risk their own troops to ambush a small settlement of struggling survivors, mow down a bunch of them with assault rifles, and grab a few to keep as hostages? _Why?_

Despite being nervous and feeling awkwardly out of place amongst all of these people who had pulls or history with the community, my impossibility to comprehend this was so frustrating I needed to just straight up ask. I took a step forward and forced my voice to be firm, "What the hell are their motives behind taking hostages?"

A response to my question was surprisingly enough pretty immediate, from a slightly frightening woman with large facial scars near the corner of the room, "They wanna push Raleigh's buttons."

I had sort of forgotten that Raleigh was there at all, but he was, just remaining quiet and looking kind of indifferent to everything that was being argued about. When this woman spoke up, though, his head whipped in her direction and he shot her an intense death glare, one that even startled me.

Thankfully, his attempted intimidation didn't faze her and she provided more information, "What?" She briefly addressed him before looking back at me, "They've got a vendetta against him. And hell, he's got one on 'em too. It's cute, they match." In any other scenario I would've allowed myself to smirk slightly at this woman trying to squeeze humor into this discussion, but the nearly unreal levels of stress in me made that impossible.

" _Kim._ " Raleigh finally spoke up. It sort of sounded like he was scolding an impudent child, although it was still sort of scary how mad he seemed. I'd never really seen him mad.

Personally, I wasn't sure what to do with this information. For one, I still had a lot of questions, like why this hatred even existed or why they hadn't tried to diffuse this situation for the safety of Warwick. I also got some answers though, like how I'd always wonder why those groups of people left armed to the teeth and came back wounded or not at all – they were probably off fighting some Fireflies somewhere. And my mind briefly flashed back to when we had first entered Warwick and I noticed those bullet holes on the walls that confused me. It was presumably the aftermath of some Firefly assault.

Red, however, seemed to know _just_ what to do with this information.

Surprising everyone in the room, myself included, Red stormed up to Raleigh and got right in his face with a fearsome glare, nearly baring her teeth she was so enraged, "You _shouldn't_ make _other_ people get involved with this _bullshit_ if its your own _personal_ vendetta! It's _personal_ cuz only you have to fuckin' deal with it, stop draggin' everyone else in to get hurt, taken hostage, or even _killed_ you _asshole!_ "

Since Red didn't seem scared at all, I was scared enough for the both of us.

An _extremely_ tense silence followed Red's impromptu rant, one that made my shoulders feel weighted. I held my breath for a reason I wasn't sure of. I didn't know Raleigh as well as Red or Finn, but I knew that you shouldn't mess with him. Red hated authority figures and I don't think that mindset had left her at that point. Also, _I_ knew she was just fueled by overwhelming concern for her cousin. But nobody else did.

Raleigh's face showed no signs of any emotion, anger included, so that was good at least. When I glanced at Finn, his eyes were so wide with terror I was worried they may fall out of his skull. He kept looking frantically between Raleigh and Red, neither of whom had moved an inch, almost like he expected one to pounce on the other at any second. Everyone else in the room kinda had the same expression, which was unnerving.

Surprisingly, Red was the next one to speak again, and she literally asked her question through clenched teeth, " _Where. Is. Clarice?_ "

Raleigh seemed more than unfazed by this entire situation, it was like he was made of stone. Since he evidently wasn't going to answer, Carmen spoke up instead, not wanting to see an all out fist-fight like I felt was about to happen, "Little Clarie?" She asked politely. Were they friends or something? Red glanced at her and nodded frantically, "I saw her get snagged. They grabbed both of the people on wall duty, I think it was her and-" She halted her words when Red just spun around and headed straight out the door. I quickly followed, eager to get out anyways.

Once we got outside and weren't in view of everyone else, Red let her real emotions show through. She started to seriously panic, worrying me greatly. She kept trying to talk but she was just incoherent and jumbled, which just seemed to dismay her even more.

"Hey hey hey," I tried to soothe her by making my voice sound reassuringly steady, since one of us needed to be stable and it certainly wasn't her at that moment. Thankfully it caught her attention a bit. I gently grabbed both of her hands to sort of hold her in place, because she kept pacing in odd semicircles as she fretted, "It's _okay._ We'll figure all of this out. Remember what you said? The Fireflies are political, they wouldn't get anything out of hurting Clarice." I told her slowly.

Even in more dysfunctional states like she was in then, Red was very reasonable and she was genuinely listening to what I said. It seemed to calm her a little bit. She exhaled audibly and was already getting it together, "You're right, I just..." She shook her head back and forth and stared down at her feet, "...I don't know how to go 'bout this. I mean, I've gotta get her, but where is she? And I can't go in alone, I-"

"-I'll come with you." She locked eyes with me, "We'll get her out of there, I promise." My words meant a lot to her, I could tell just by the look on her face.

She opened her mouth to respond but stopped short when the post office door was opened up. Five people trailed out in single-file: Finn, Carmen, that woman named Kim, Hopkins, and lastly, Raleigh himself. I released my loose grip on Red and turned to fully face all of them.

Raleigh still sported absolutely no emotion on his face whatsoever, even as he spoke, "The sun's setting. Once it does, talk to Finn at the bar. He'll debrief you on what's going on. You're both coming." He started to walk off, followed by Hopkins and Kim.

I had one prominent question though, and I turned around and called it out before he could get out of earshot, "What're we doing?"

He merely glanced over his shoulder at me, "They attack us at our home base? Fine. The least we could do is return the favor."


	11. Fireflies

**Sorry this one's so goddamn long, I just couldn't find a place to logically split it up.**

It felt like it took forever for the sun to set. That may or may not have been because Red just wouldn't stop pacing the floor of our room. I was worried her feet may start to make a literal rut in our carpet, but I didn't ask her to stop. If it was helping, I didn't care.

Personally, I was terrified about this. We were going to attack a Firefly base. It was probably super fortified with like, snipers on watchtowers that would peck us off with ease, or some super thick concrete wall that we couldn't bypass. I just assumed Raleigh had at least some background knowledge of this place or he wouldn't be marching us so confidently straight for it. Then again I was mainly trying to reassure myself, and I knew that too.

When it was starting to officially get dark, Red just gestured vaguely at me to follow her and took off. She wasn't running or jogging, but walking so goddamn fast I struggled to keep up with her without doing so. She kept wringing her hands – so often she very well might have just been rubbing her skin off at that point. We were at the bar pretty quick, and Finn was waiting for us at a table toward the back. Surprisingly, there weren't many people there. Fuck, a lot of them were probably grieving and were smart enough to keep themselves away from alcohol. Charlie wasn't strumming away at his guitar, either. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen him in a while. A dull pang of sadness shot through my chest at the realization that he might've died in the attack. Without his added ambiance that I'd grown so accustomed to, this place just seemed depressingly hollow.

Upon approaching him, we noticed a hand-drawn map on a napkin spread across the surface he stood at. He wasn't looking too good, kind of unkempt, his hair extra scraggly and his stubble getting a bit more out of control than he usually allowed it to. He also looked exhausted. Was he up for this? I almost asked, but he started to talk before I had a good chance to.

"Hey guys, how ya holdin' up?" He asked. It seemed odd because the question wasn't followed by one of his trademark toothy grins. The stress he was dealing with was visible in his disposition – you could totally tell if you knew him well enough, which I guessed I did at that point.

Red let out a dragging breath it seemed like she had had held in since she found out Clarice was taken, "Worried goddamn sick, Finn, you?"

He half-shrugged, "Been better, been worse." He drummed his fingertips against the wooden table, shaking his head a bit back and forth, "Raleigh is _not_ happy with you, Red." He muttered this, almost like he wasn't supposed to be saying it, and I was sort of surprised he was. He almost never willingly dispensed any info on our enigmatic "leader" without intense prying or the judgment-clouding effects of alcohol.

She let out a scoff, "Am I 'sposed to care?" Like I said, her fear for Clarice was making her accent more intense than I'd ever heard it before. If the circumstances were different I would've been making fun of her for it to no end, but now really wasn't the time.

I stepped in before she could get too sassy, asking the question that she should have been if she wasn't so stubborn, "What does that mean for us?"

Finn glanced between Red and I, taking my question more seriously by the expression on his face, "He just didn't plan on going after the Fireflies like this. But you've got sway here, cowgirl, and once you got up in Raleigh's face like that then stormed off, you sorta set off a chain reaction. Everyone got all riled up and unruly, and not even Raleigh could calm them all down, so he had to agree at the very least that we'd go get the hostages back."

Red laughed vaguely, "He really needed a near-riot to be convinced to go get 'em?" She shook her head back and forth in implied disbelief, "God _damn_ what a dick."

Finn didn't defend or rip on Raleigh and just sort of turned his attention back to the map still sitting on the table. I spoke up again, realizing that I had been kind of weirdly laconic to people besides Red that day, "What's up with this, Finn?" I asked slowly, pointing toward the napkin.

I could tell he appreciated my change of tone and solid presence. I was the least affected person there, and I knew that I needed to be the steady one to reassure the others this time. I was more than willing to do so, it was just that I was unfamiliar with the role.

He cleared his throat a bit, "I drew this up just a while before you guys came in. Everyone else who's going has a basic sort of idea on how this is gonna pan out, but you two haven't had anything to do with these little raids yet."

"Wait, you've been _raiding_ them?" I asked in overwhelming confusion. "Raid" was not at all a nice term to use when referring to two groups interactions with one another.

Finn held up his hands slightly in mock-surrender, "Not me, not me, just the others that were in that room before. I stay outta this stuff."

"Well, what do you even raid them for?" I was assuming that these raids weren't too successful, since Warwick was still short on supplies for the Winter. Either these raids's sole purpose was to kill Fireflies or the Fireflies didn't have many things to take.

"Whatever they can get their hands on before they've got twenty bullets in their chest." He could tell that I wasn't pleased with the motives behind this and he elaborated, "Look, Raleigh's excuse for it is that we've already scavenged everything dry, and he doesn't want our guys going too far from Warwick. The Firefly base is moderately close by, so... yeah." I pursed my lips, "I know. It's bullshit."

Red piped up, "You're damned right it is." She rolled her eyes to herself before gesturing toward the map again, reminding him of what he had been doing.

"Right, sorry," He put his finger down on a crudely drawn little town, "Here's us," He traced along through some woods until he got to what looked to be a huge building, "And here's the base. Only tricky bit is the trek through the forest. People might get lost or separated so stay focused in there."

"What's the building, like actually?" I asked, stepping over so I could see the map right side up.

Finn hummed a bit like he was thinking, "I've never actually been in it myself, just know the way, but I did used to live here. My best bet would be a factory. One that was run down and abandoned even before the outbreak. We had a good lot of those scattered around." He abruptly reached down and crumpled up the napkin-map into a ball before putting it into his pocket.

"How many people are we goin' with?" Red asked. When I glanced at her I noticed she held her pistol in her hand now.

Finn scratched at the back of his neck, "Um... I'd guess around ten, fifteen. Including us. I'm coming too." That was reassuring for some reason. Red just nodded at the estimate right as Finn started to head toward the door, "We're gonna be grouping up at the ga-" He stopped short when he realized that we didn't really _have_ a gate anymore. People were already working on making a new one, but for now, all we had managed to do was shove some crates in front of the newly acquired hole, "-entrance."

 _Nice save._ I thought to myself as we exited the bar. So far nobody else was around the "entrance" yet, and we didn't even have the usual two or three people on wall duty. Nope, it was just one big burly dude – probably the only one currently willing to do it. We hovered around the makeshift crate barricade and stood idly, not saying anything to each other. I was just thinking to myself how screwed I most likely was, because this was going to be a fight mostly focused on guns, which I couldn't aim for shit with. I mean, at point blank range, I might be able to get a body shot, but otherwise? Nope. I'd be there mainly for moral support.

I noticed the first person approaching us, alone, and looked around for anyone else, but it was just this guy. Since it was darker now and nobody seemed bold enough to leave their homes to light the usual street lamps, I couldn't see this dude's face, Honestly I didn't care who he was, since he was probably just another one of Raleigh's lackeys. When I glanced at Finn though, and saw his blatant confusion, my attention was drawn slightly.

"Zeke?" He asked when the guy got in earshot, "What the hell are you doin' here, kid? Get back inside."

When I looked closer, I noticed that this "Zeke" was incredibly shaky. He seemed nervous, or worried maybe. I also noticed that he was young. Like really young, probably not even twenty. I'd seen him around before but didn't think he was anyone too important. He looked pretty nerdy, actually; he was gangly and wore glasses.

He was extremely rattled but also appeared relieved at the sight of Finn. I assumed they knew each other somehow, "Finn, I need to come with you guys." He said, his voice quaking. Although he was simply emanating pure distress, I had a feeling that he wasn't going to take no for an answer unless he was physically forced to stay.

"What? Do you even know where we're going?" Finn crossed his arms. He sort of reminded me of a dad preparing to refuse his child something that they really wanted. After what had happened with Hank, I wondered if Finn had ever had kids, but I let the thought slip my mind.

Zeke nodded weakly, "Nate told me. He should be on his way here soon too, but I _need_ to come, alright?" I noticed a tiny little snub-nose pistol strapped to his hip.

Red spoke up, "Exactly how old're you?" I was glad she had asked that so I wouldn't have to.

Zeke looked at her quizzically, "Eighteen." I think his glasses just made him look younger than he really was. If I had to guess, I might've even interpreted him as a super tall sixteen year old.

Finn scoffed, "Yeah, just _turned_ eighteen like, what, three days ago?" Zeke nodded grudgingly.

How did Finn know his birthday? In fact, these two seemed to know each other pretty well. They weren't related form what I could tell – Finn looked like he may be Italian or something, and Zeke had deep brown skin, so I'm not really sure how that works out. My gut was telling me that there wasn't any blood between them, so I just listened to it. That conclusion left me more confused and curious about the basis of the relationship, though.

"Why do you want to come with us so badly?" I finally asked the million-dollar question, since nobody else had yet.

Although I had asked, he looked straight at Finn the entire time he answered it, "Finn, it's Clare. They _took_ _Clarice_. I-I've gotta help, I've gotta get her, man, I can't just-"

Finn grabbed the panicking teen by his shoulders, "Slow down, kid, it'll be _fine._ We're gonna get her, don't you worry your curly little head." With that he ruffled Zeke's black hair, which I now noticed was in fact curly and coarse.

How did he know Clarice? Jesus, there were so many ties being revealed to me that I hadn't known existed before. When I really racked my brain, I may have seen this kid with her every now and then, but they were amongst a crowd of other teenagers. Why weren't her other friends approaching us and begging to tag along?

Red startled me slightly by taking a step forward, looking sort of cautious but her expression couldn't seem to get rid of that underlying worry, "Wait, does she still have that blood thing?" I raised an eyebrow at her. Blood thing?

Zeke just nodded gravely and Red swore through her teeth. What was I missing here? I didn't think that Finn knew either, but then again he just looked kind of impartial to this unknown information. I, on the other hand, was getting a bit tired of being out of the loop.

"What're you talking about?" I was starting to notice other people emerging from the buildings lining this long street. They were geared up and heading our way.

Zeke exhaled hard, like if he didn't manually focus on his breathing patterns her may pass out on the spot, "She has hemophilia. Type A." It was funny he said that like I'd immediately understand what it was. It sounded vaguely familiar but I didn't at all have a definition of it anywhere in my brain.

Red knew I'd have no idea what that meant, so she said it in terms that made sense to me, "It's some condition where you bleed for longer than you should, or something. I thought she got over it." Shit that sounded bad. In this world, bleeding wasn't too uncommon. So if you bled more than you're supposed to, you might get seriously fucked up.

Zeke pursed his lips a bit. I was getting a vibe off this kid that he was smart, maybe too much so. Then again that may just be me basing too much off appearances, since he wore glasses, which instantly makes me think someone's smart, "You don't 'get over it', it's permanent." Red didn't look too happy with him correcting her, but she said nothing, "Plus it's more serious now. We don't have medicine on hand that'd treat it properly if she got any internal bleeding, which is what usually happens. It can get bad." At least is really sounded like he was worried about her. Actually, the know-it-all persona that this guy seemed to have was wearing off now. He probably knew all this stuff about hemophilia because he wanted to know what to do if Clarice got hurt.

Finn made a _tsk_ ing sound with his mouth and my eyes moved to him, "Jeez, remember that time a few years back when she hit her head really hard? Fuck, girl was a mess for weeks."

Red moved toward him, concern radiating off of her in tangible waves, "What d'ya mean 'a mess'?" When I looked harder, I noticed that she was physically shaking. I discreetly reached over and held her thankfully nearby hand. For a few seconds I thought she didn't register it at all, but was proven wrong when she gave it a thankful squeeze.

Finn tugged his jacket's thick hood up and over his head, "Before we could get the right medicine for her, she kept passing out randomly and could barely walk. Said she had trouble seeing too, and that she'd get dizzy if she stood up." He shook his head back and forth slightly. I could tell that all of this stuff was just going to make Red even more of a nervous wreck. Hell, it was stressing _me_ out and I wasn't even particularly close with Clarice. Finn gestured a bit to Zeke, "Pretty sure this guy lugged her around on his back everywhere until she got better, right?" Zeke nodded sheepishly, some color coming to his cheeks. Finn winked at him, "Ahh, it was cute."

I realized then that Zeke and Clarice's relationship went deeper than I had even started to presume. It was still hard to place though. Either the two were extremely close, in like a brother-sister sort of way, or they were dating or something. I wondered for a moment or two if people even dated anymore, or if it would even be classifiable as "dating", with the way the world was now. When I afforded myself a glance, I noticed Red now squinting a bit at him in suspicion. She was very protective of Clarice – so much so that I wouldn't be surprised if she didn't approve of her getting involved with any boy in any way.

Zeke cleared his throat slightly, looking around for a second and noticing all of the others getting within earshot, "I don't know or care about this stuff with the Fireflies, alright, I am so goddamn _sick_ of hearing about the Fireflies. All I know is that they took Clare, and I will _not_ let them hurt her." He spoke lowly now, as if what he was saying was incriminating, when it really wasn't anything of the sort.

Finn was getting a bit wary of the people approaching and he firmly clapped Zeke on his shoulder, making the distraught teen lock eyes with him, "They aren't gonna hurt her. Just keep your head on straight and everything will work out fine."

Carmen joined the little semicircle that the four of us had formed, SMG held familiarly in her hands. The tightness my chest had been experiencing for the past few hours surprisingly enough loosened up a bit when I spotted her. I really didn't know why her mere presence reassured me so much. Maybe it was because she had been in the army before the world ended, or that I sort of knew her – had a rapport with her. Then again it might've been that, like Red and I, she retained a subtle sense of humor even when things were going to hell. Either way, when she shot me a smile and gave me a little nod, my shoulders untensed for the first time since I heard those gunshots earlier that day.

The feeling of unease returned, however, when I noticed Raleigh amongst the growing crowd. People were kind of keeping their distance from him. Now that I looked closer, he seemed less like a stone, emotionless statue than normal. But not in a good way. Nope, now he was just visibly stressed and kinda pissed off. Jeez, Red really _had_ gotten to him. I guessed nobody had ever publicly contested the stuff he said before. It didn't seem like too many of these people were overly rebellious or independent.

The rest of the newly formed group that had gathered at the entrance just included people that meant basically nothing to me; some familiar faces that never seemed to smile, even if you flashed them one when you walked by them on the street. Hopkins was there, though, but like Raleigh, he exuded unapproachability at that particular moment.

Raleigh took out his hefty magnum and marched over to our makeshift crate barrier all "leader"-like. For some reason after Red's outburst, he was losing his intimidation factor to me. I guess she just kinda got the ball rolling. Now that I thought about it, I took a lot of my social cues from Red. I wasn't sure why, maybe it was just because she always managed to seem way more sure of herself in all of her endeavors than I ever was in any of mine. I didn't delve too far into that train of thought, though, because Raleigh was starting to talk.

"Okay, you all know the drill. Stay sharp and don't do anything stupid. Try and keep quiet when you're in the woods, it's dark and there might be infected. The last thing we want right now is clickers on our asses." At least that was something we could all agree on. Rolling his neck on his shoulders, he exhaled a bit before gesturing vaguely for everyone to follow his lead.

When Red hung back, I did too. We watched as the others started to file out in little pockets of varying sizes. Finn stuck behind with us, and when I looked, Zeke was still at his side. Carmen had headed forward with the others, but I noticed her glance around. When she didn't spot someone she presumably was looking for, she stopped mid-step and spun on her heel. Locking eyes with me, she looked almost relieved, then just stood in place – waiting.

"He's not the best at giving detailed orders." Zeke muttered under his breath. He nudged his glasses a bit, adjusting them on the bridge of his nose. God he seemed way too young to be doing this, but he _was_ eighteen. I had to keep reminding myself of that.

Finn sighed to himself and took out his pistol, checking the clip to make sure it was fully-loaded, "You don't know the half of it, kid." Zeke didn't at all look pleased with that nickname.

Red started to proceed and I stuck at her heels instinctively, "Alright guys, I know none of us've been inside this place we're headed, but I'd feel a whole lot safer if we had some kinda game plan before just chargin' right on in." We were a fair distance from the bulk of the group, but Red had definitely intended that so I didn't question anything.

When we passed by Carmen she merged with us seamlessly, not saying a word because she could tell we were in the middle of a conversation, "I can make some educated guesses." Finn spoke up, "This place is gonna be totally trashed. The Fireflies have resources but not the kind they could use to get a run down old factory into proper condition."

Once we officially stepped outside the boundary of Warwick's walls, I felt even more unsafe, despite the fact that the Firefly attack had already left me with some intense unease. Shivering slightly from a particularly frigid breeze, I wrung my gloved hands together as I spoke up for the first time in a while, "So, what? Are we all just gonna fall through the floorboards or something?"

"No, no, nothing like that. Probably." I raised an eyebrow at Finn's response and he elaborated, "Just don't go stomping around or jumping repeatedly in the same spot, and we should be fine in that department."

The woods were coming up. I'd never actually entered the dense section of them and I didn't look forward to it. One time when I was a kid, I had gotten lost in the forest at night when I went camping with my family and was wandering around for like, four hours. Since I was six I was pretty convinced I was just gonna die. Now I wasn't a huge fan of really thick clusters of trees. Regular woods were fine, if they were well lit enough and moderately thin. Not the type we were in then. We crossed the threshold of what I personally considered the woods' outskirts and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck standing up – both from cold and underlying childhood fears.

"Then what does the building being old have to do with anything?" I asked. Everyone else had their guns out. I assumed I should do the same, so I tugged my pistol from my belt loop with minor hesitation. God I just never felt right holding that thing. It basically felt the same as holding a boomerang or something – I knew I couldn't do any effective damage with it.

"I dunno... just... a tidbit of information."

"He just wanted to hear himself talk." Carmen piped up from my right, smirking slightly to herself at the retaliation she was sure to earn from that comment.

"Hey-" When Finn started to protest, Red immediately held her hand up to halt his words. At first I was confused as to why, but then I realized it was from his volume. We were pretty far into these woods now, and one of the few clear instructions Raleigh had given was to shut the hell up. Finn caught her meaning and did just that.

Her silent shushing had caused a sort of chain reaction, because nobody made a peep for the next solid five minutes. The only sound was our boots crunching loosely through the relatively fresh snow. It was really dark and I was worried I'd trip on something, but by nothing short of a miracle I didn't even stumble.

This trek was longer than I would've estimated it to be, and it was getting more and more unnerving because I knew just how far we were from the slight safety of Warwick. Although my eyes had adjusted a bit to the lack of light, all I could make out were the vague outlines of people. We had thankfully caught up to the others so at least I didn't feel like we'd been left in the dust.

Finally, Red slightly startled all of us a bit by whispering, "Said I wanted a game plan, 'member?"

"It's hard to make any sort of plan when we haven't even seen what we're up against yet." Zeke responded, voice so quiet I struggled to hear it over the slightly howling winds.

"Look, if I had to make any assumptions, I'd say that we're at least gonna be taking them by surprise." Carmen whispered, SMG sort of half-aimed at our surroundings, "They probably wouldn't anticipate a retaliation, and they definitely wouldn't think we'd come back to bite them in the ass the same day they pulled their shit. So, there's that."

"Yeah, but our element of surprise will probably be gone once Raleigh and his cohorts kick the door down with guns blazing." I mentioned.

"Fucking, whatever you guys. None of us know what we're doing because none of us have been inside this place before, so at least we're all just as clueless as anyone else." Finn piped up in a tone that showed he was done with this conversation. He was starting to sound extra serious. I think it was because we were getting close to the base. The forest was starting to finally thin out, so we were nearing its end.

All of us stopped talking when we actually did emerge from what I would personally classify as the actual "woods". There were still trees scattered around but it was just that – tree scattered around. And, whaddaya know, right ahead of us was a sizable old factory, just as decrepit but oddly intimidating as I'd imagined it to be. I'm not the most familiar with industry so I had no idea what this place might've produced back in its day. It had really tall smokestack things coming out of the top, though, if that meant anything.

I watched Raleigh and the others merge into a more unified cluster and head toward what I assumed was some type of entrance. There was some lighting, but it was incredibly scarce and barely visible as it slightly showed through the various windows scattered around the building. Everyone had gone silent as if on cue, myself included. This was no time for a witty comment or tension-lightening observation. Nope, I was in a life threatening situation again. Gee, how I'd missed those.

Red exhaled before initiating our approach, taking the first step forward. Our small group of five was still lagging behind from the rest of them. As always, I followed closely, only to almost jump straight out of my skin when a hand firmly grabbed my arm – holding me in place. I stopped still and turned to look, seeing that Carmen was the one restricting me. Her sudden movement made my other three fellow stragglers freeze too, everyone looking quizzically at the former soldier.

She spoke so quietly she might as well have been mouthing her words, "Colleen's right. Those guys are gonna be immediately discovered with the way that they plan on barging in, and also immediately in the line of fire." Her eyes locked with mine instead of having previously been drifting around her four companions, "I know you aren't the best shot with that thing," She tapped the barrel of my pistol gently with her index finger, "And if we have the option, I'd rather not throw you into the middle of a firefight." As she finished her explanation, she shifted her grip on my forearm instead to my hand, very briefly squeezing it with a trace of a reassuring smile before withdrawing altogether.

For some reason all of my words were getting caught in my throat, so I personally couldn't respond to this. But her evident concern was unexpectedly endearing. Red spoke up, "Yeah, yer really shit with a gun, Collie." Jesus she only ever used that nickname when her accent was at like, _maximum_ thickness. She was terrified. I was the only one who caught it though, the others didn't know her well enough, "Fine, if we don't go with 'em, how else can we get in? I doubt ya know the layout of this place."

She had a point. I glared at her slightly though, despite the fact that I wouldn't at all deny the observation of my absolute inability to aim any and all firearms, "It can't be that hard. Any window on the first floor can just be broken open."

"We can wait until the shooting starts, then smash the glass so nobody hears over the gunshots." Zeke added on. Carmen nodded at him in agreement.

"Well we better hurry up, cuz they're almost at the doors." Finn reminded us. When we all looked over, he was right. In fact, Raleigh was practically arms-length from what I assumed was the main entrance.

I snapped out of my abruptly acquired inability to speak by literally shaking my head back and forth slightly, and turned my attention to Red, "C'mon. That window," I pointed at the first one that I saw with a light on inside. If there were others, they weren't illuminated enough to be spotted in this intense darkness, "Double time."

We were all moving within the next second, no more words needing to be exchanged. We were all going at the fastest pace possible without making too much noise, not wanting to be detected prematurely by either the Fireflies or Raleigh and the others. It didn't take long before we were all hugging the wall of the factory, waiting for the first shot to be fired. Carmen had the butt end of her SMG ready to smash open that glass as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

Finn was starting to get jittery, though, and it wasn't just shaking from the cold. Out of all of us he was the most heavily clothed, with at least three, thick layers on, a hood, and gloves. At a point he piped up in a low, frantic tone, " _Fuck_ , you guys, Raleigh wouldn't be down with us doing this. When he gives us a plan, he wants it done _just_ that way, no compromises, no changes, _exactly_ how he says." He said. I knew that Raleigh sort of intimidated him, but I was starting to see that it ran a bit deeper than that. I just didn't get why.

"He ain't gonna jump out from under your bed at night, so just-" Red's words were interrupted by the sound of a door being kicked down, followed almost immediately by gunfire.

As soon as those bullets started flying, Carmen brought her SMG slamming into the glass, shattering it on impact. It was nearly inaudible on account of the intense firefight now happening over by the main entrance. Not hesitating, Carmen briefly knocked some of the remaining shards out of the window-frame and vaulted into the building, plunging straight into nearly complete darkness. I followed her lead, ignoring the extremely prominent fear settling itself on my chest.

It took a good few seconds of pure terror until my eyes adjusted to this new lighting, or rather lack-thereof. Although I knew it was next to useless, I clutched my pistol with white knuckles, waiting alongside Carmen while the others filed in after us. Once everyone was accounted for, it was like we all realized in unison that we had no idea where to go from there. While the gunshots were still happening, we had to speak up to be audible.

"Which way?" Finn asked. From what I could manage to decipher, we were in some kind of miscellaneous storage room. There were boxes scattered around in a skewed manner, all of them beginning to or having already gathered cobwebs and excess dust. A sole, naked bulb hung from the center of the ceiling, with a string dangling down. I wondered briefly if it worked but decided against testing it out.

Carmen was holding her SMG like it was as routine as checking her watch for the time, also having instinctively pressed herself against a nearby wall as her eyes darted around for threats. I felt like her abundance of combat experience made up for my absolute absence of it and sort of balanced out the group's overall skill level, "It's hard to tell if Raleigh and the others are holding up well against-"

"-Where'll Clare be?" Red cut her off frantically. Although she _looked_ like she was more than prepared to shoot the next person she saw right between the eyes, her voice showed just how terrified and overwhelmingly concerned she was. I wondered if anyone else noticed, though.

"If I had to guess, I'd say on one of the higher floors." Finn said after a brief pause, "Somewhere kinda far away from their main entrance. Just to be safe." That made sense, at least.

Not speaking another word, Red promptly headed to the nearest door – there were two; one toward the direction of the ongoing combat and one away from it. Upon reaching the latter, she threw it open, pistol aimed and ready although I had a creeping feeling that her usual awareness was dulled on account of her emotional state. God it was times like that when I really wished I was good with a gun. I wanted to be able to protect her. Either way, I stuck at her back, hearing the others following us because we had no other idea where to go.

Red had revealed a long, relatively narrow corridor with a few scarce windows lining its cracked walls. Finn had been right, this place was definitely old. I was starting to doubt what he said about the floor being sturdy, because the concrete we were walking on felt extremely weak. I almost made some snarky comment, but I held it back for some reason.

This hall was straight-forward and had no points to be ambushed from, so Red just jogged through it, breathing becoming almost erratic. Jesus she was a mess. And I knew that she would be too frantic to let me even _try_ to calm her down. The only way I could help her would be to find Clarice sooner rather than later. We all matched her pace with ease, though it quickened the further she got from her intense, worry-driven haste.

She burst through a set of double doors, making me cringe slightly at her lack of stealth, and the five of us only had a few seconds to take note of the three fireflies in the room. Having no doubt heard the gunshots, they were puttering around, trying to get spare ammo or first-aid kits, but they all stopped still in unison upon our not-so-sneaky entrance. For a dragging moment or two none of us moved, until Red just raised her pistol and downed the one directly in front of her. This, naturally, prompted a hostile reaction from the other two, who had military grade assault rifles on hand. Fuck.

The room we were in was huge in every aspect of the word – tall ceiling with some scattered around, rusted catwalks visible, wide, long. It was also in notably more disrepair. There were literal holes in the concrete floors now, and though they were covered up by planks of wood, those didn't look too safe either. They seemed rotted. When I allowed myself a quick, split-second analysis of this new expanse, I spotted a staircase on the opposite side of the room. Past the Fireflies. I knew that Red would do literally anything to get there, and that she noticed it too. She was a bit off her game but she wasn't blind.

There were a good few conveyor belt sort of things that looked absolutely ancient, presumably used for assembly lines or something, and they were some of the only things between us and our abruptly acquired attackers. Before they had the chance to pull the trigger, I dove for cover behind one of them right as the _rat-ta-tat-tat_ of automatic fire bounced off the walls and made my ears ring. I was joined almost immediately by everyone else, although Red, instead of looking thankful that there were some barriers to prevent her from being Swiss cheese, just seemed aggravated and impatient with this entire encounter.

Unfortunately, however, when I said the belts were ancient, I meant _extra_ ancient. They shook and shuddered like crazy just when I pressed my back against one. So bullets slamming into it? Didn't have the best result.

Finn suddenly cursed before hissing through his teeth, prompting us all to look at him. One of the many bullets had managed to get _through_ our cover and skimmed his arm. It wasn't too bad from what I could tell, but some blood did start to drip from the new wound.

Alright, so this spot was officially unsafe. Carmen looked frantically from her left to her right before sighing in frustration, "We've gotta move. Colleen, Red, that way," she pointed to our right, "Finn, Zeke, with me."

Despite our lack of communication or notable agreement with this plan, nobody protested. I think we were all just sort of trusting Carmen on account of her experience doing this sort of thing. Even Red wasn't putting up any kind of fuss, and she "didn't much 'preciate takin' orders from nobody", as she would say.

Carmen started to count down from five on her fingers and I got ready to lunge in the direction of the next conveyor belt. It was farther away than I would've liked, and there was a patch of soggy wood covering up a particularly large hole in the floor we'd have to cross. _Shit_ I did _not_ want to do that.

When Carmen got to zero, we all moved in our specified directions still in a crouch. Red's urgency caused her to be the one going first, though I followed close behind. The Fireflies were caught off guard by our group's separation, and it took them a few seconds to realize where we had gone. It was also incredibly dark in this room, seeing as it had virtually no lighting in the part we were in. Towards the back, where the stairs were, there was some type of lamp that made them visible, thankfully. Otherwise we never would've seen them. We had a hard enough time seeing the Fireflies, but thankfully their yellow clothing stuck out a bit in the blackness.

One of them noticed Red and I right as we crossed over that fateful patch of planks. Or, more specifically, as _I_ crossed over them – she had already traversed the obstacle without so much as a second glance, but she had made it even _more_ weak in the process. It creaked and shifted underneath my feet, and right as I myself nearly stepped on concrete once more, a bullet literally shot off a chunk of my boot, though it miraculously caused no physical damage to me. I yelped (girlishly) aloud, being understandably startled, and sort of staggered backward. And, wouldn't ya know it, I was on that wood for _just_ a bit too long. The plank I was primarily on snapped beneath my weight, and although I tried to grab something, _anything_ before I completely fell, the next thing I knew I was in midair. It was a solid second or two of plummeting before I made contact with some hard dirt, which wasn't the best feeling.

I could still hear the firefight up above me, and from what I could tell, the _rat-at-at-a_ was getting more sparse. Someone up there had taken out another Firefly. I winced as I struggled into a sitting position, knowing I'd definitely have enough varying bruises to form a rainbow of pain later. Right as I looked up to the hole I had unwillingly come through, the rest of the assault rifle fire had stopped completely. I let myself exhale heavily in slight relief.

In what seemed like a millisecond, Red's head popped into view. I had never seen her so visibly distressed. With Clarice's absence already a weight on her shoulders, if she thought I had died on the way down there, Jesus there's no way she would even be able to function. It was dark, though, even more so on my end, and she couldn't really see me.

"Colleen?!" She shouted down right as I could hear the others rushing over. The blatant panic in her voice was obvious enough for anyone to detect it, and it was endearing to hear just how concerned she was. You could see it in her eyes, too.

"I'm fine! It's cool!" I called back up to her. She sighed in mild relief but wasn't at all calm.

She left my sight for a second, "Well, uh, I'll git you a ladder, or somethin', just hold on a minute,"

"No, no, it's fine Red!" I was sure to be extra loud so she could hear. Following my words, both she and Carmen entered my view. I was a bit surprised at just how worried Carmen looked too, "Just keep going, find Clarice! I'll make my way back to you!" At that, I finally glanced at my new surroundings. It looked recently made – tunnels dug by the Fireflies no doubt. Thankfully it was considerably more sturdy than the concrete above my head.

"You sure 'bout that?!" She seemed skeptical, probably doubting my ability to navigate this place on my own with absolutely no reference points or guides. Hell, I doubted it too.

"Yeah! Don't worry about me, I'll be fine! Nobody's down here anyways!" That last part wasn't 100% true, or at least I wasn't certain of it. I definitely hadn't looked around enough to assure that. Then again if there _was_ anyone else nearby, my shouting would've undoubtedly drawn their attention.

Carmen pursed her lips, "If you don't find us, we'll find you! Promise!" For some reason that was incredibly reassuring.

"Alright! Just go on, you're wasting time!" I knew that would prompt Red to immediately get moving, and I was right. I could hear them talking but it was just quiet enough for me to not actually understand the words spoken.

Finally, Red left my sight again along with Carmen, and footsteps started to depart. Before they got too far, though, that fateful southern voice called out, "Don't you go doin' anythin' stupid, Collie!"

And to that, I simply mumbled to myself, "No promises..."

After allowing myself a few dragging moments to sort of get my bearings, I got to my feet with some difficulty before leaning against the nearby dirt wall. I wasn't sure how the Fireflies had managed to create this weird little subterranean layer, but they had. It was extra dark, though, I couldn't see shit. So I sort of just cautiously walked along the wall as I waited, or rather hoped for my eyes to adjust, hand out in front of me so I wouldn't slam into anything face-first.

It took a solid minute or so until I could make out the vague outlines of things. From what I could roughly interpret, this was a sort of workshop or something. There were boxes that were full of... something metal. Maybe bullets, maybe gun parts, I really couldn't tell and I didn't care enough to investigate further. There was a good few workbenches too, all of them pretty loaded with complicated stuff that I didn't look too closely at either. There was, however, what looked to be a military grade utility belt on one of them – taken off and abandoned there. It was hard to see, but it had a good few pouches, a holster, and a knife sheathe.

Snatching it up quickly, I strapped it to my waist and shuffled around a bit, getting used to its weight. I felt fancy and prepared now, even though the pouches were empty. I also realize I didn't have my gun on me anymore. I must've dropped it somewhere during the fall. Briefly I considered looking for it, but then remembered that it was literally useless to me, so I kept going.

There was an opening that was just a bit too short for me to walk through, so I ducked my head and entered another little dirt room. This one had a light, though, which made me feel a little better. Said light was a simple gas-lantern, and it sat upon a wooden table covered with various documents that looked pretty damn important. Or maybe they were junk. I wasn't sure, and also wasn't the best judge of things like that. Regardless, I approached it and scanned some of the things over.

There was some simple stuff, like a map, an inventory list, a really old diagram of how those conveyor belts above me worked, but one thing stuck out to me. It was a small booklet stuffed to the gills with various little sticky-note size papers.

I flipped it open and pulled one out, to see the words _"Station 90.3 FM: 'No boats at docks anymore – look at (fishery?) -static-' Tony says keep track"._ Confused and curious, I plucked out another, reading the sloppy handwriting as fast as I could, _"Same station. Different voice – girl: 'Can anyone hear us? Out of (?) -static- need some (the hell is she saying?)' Cut off by static. Loops"._ I got a third almost immediately after, _"Same thing. Pre-recorded? Tony says stop – pointless"._ Clearly this guy didn't stop, because there were more, which I eagerly read, _"Same message for two weeks now – guys said they'll break radio if I don't get back to my shift. Just_ _say_ _**something**_ _"._ The next one I got was a folded up, bigger piece of paper, _"Same guy from the first time – really choppy. 'Madaket'. The fuck is Madaket? 'Safe from (?) -static for three minutes- 'Island off of (fuck this fucking static!) -(near?) Falmouth coast'. -static, cuts out, doesn't loop-"_

I was trying and failing to piece together what this was, and why it intrigued me so much, but I couldn't quite manage. This guy was talking about a radio, I knew that, and he was hearing stuff on a station. I glanced to my left and right and spotted what I assumed to be the radio in question in a broken heap near the corner of this room. Shit. I wanted to try and find that same station. So this guy was listening to these broadcasts and trying to understand what they were about, who was sending them, and what they were saying. Jesus now I really wanted to know too.

My thought process was cut off by the sound of a gun cocking. I felt myself freeze, but my eyes turned in the direction of the noise. A harsh light abruptly shone straight at my face and I squinted, only for it to be moved away with haste. It was a Firefly. His yellow jacket was pretty distinctive. Whoever he was, though, he hadn't shot me yet or even told me to put my hands up. At first glance I wasn't armed, since my Swiss army knife was tucked in my jacket pocket, but considering what was happening on the upper floors, this guy had all the reason to riddle me with bullets. So why wasn't he?

A tense silence spread, neither of us moving an inch. It was just a bit too dark for me to properly analyze his expression or really get a look at his features. I had a weird feeling that he was young, though, or at least younger than me. Granted, I was basing this off little more than a hunch. As the pause extended, I was starting to note his shaky breathing and unsteady hand. He seemed pretty determined to not say a single word, but I for one was losing my patience after what must have been a solid five minutes.

Finally, risking my life in a way that Red would have most definitely classified as "stupid", I spoke up, "Um..." He visibly jumped slightly at my sudden vocalization, and although I half-expected him to shoot, I kept going, "... hey."

He gulped almost audibly before managing something out, _finally_ , "... Hi?"

Now I knew for sure that he was young. At the very least younger than me – his voice gave it away. His age really didn't matter when considering the fact he had a gun pointed straight at my face. It didn't take much experience to shoot someone at this range, hell, I could probably do it, and that was saying something.

"So uh..." I gestured very slightly to his weapon, still a bit scared to move, "... how's it goin'?" At this point _I_ didn't even know what I was doing, so I could only imagine his confusion.

Another silence followed and I was starting to wonder if my decision to speak would actually be the death of me, but my fears were soon replaced by significant relief as the Firefly just sighed, lowering his pistol and pointing it more to his feet. I let my shoulder untense just a bit, but I wasn't totally insane and I knew I wasn't at all out of danger yet.

He ran his gloved palm down his boyish face that I could now see a bit better, scanning me up and down some more before pointing towards the table I still stood next to, "Why're you looking at my stuff?" He sounded exhausted. At first I thought his odd breathing patterns were from nerves, but now he just seemed out of breath.

I was a bit caught off guard by his question, "I uh, well, just stumbled across it."

He swiveled his neck and examined our surroundings before cocking an eyebrow at me, "It's sort of hard to just 'stumble' upon this place." He had a point there.

I shrugged a bit, "It wasn't intentional. I literally fell through the floor." He seemed a bit skeptical still, "Look, no offense, you've got a nice little setup here, but I don't willingly wander into dark dirt basements for shits and giggles."

Surprisingly enough that earned me a very slight, barely noticeable, subtle grin from this guy. At this point, his gun was practically back in its holster. Who says you can't talk yourself out of a bad situation?

When he approached me a bit, it took some conscious effort not to instinctively back away. He hovered at my side now and looked toward what I now knew were his things. He reached over and picked up the booklet I had just been poking through, no doubt noticing that the papers that had been within it were now scattered about.

"Anything interest you?" He asked, setting it down again and turning his attention back to me.

He was close enough now for me to get at him with my knife. And his guard had most definitely lowered. If I was going to strike at him, now was my chance, but for some reason I felt absolutely no compulsion to defend myself against this guy. He wasn't at all threatening to me anymore, which I knew might be a bit of a preemptive assumption, but trusting my gut had gotten me this far in this world.

"The stuff about the radio, yeah." His little notes left just a bit too much to the imagination and it was infuriating. They seemed important for a reason I couldn't, and still can't explain.

He nodded a bit to himself, "Trust me, if I knew any more about it, I'd tell you." I believed him. He didn't seem like someone who'd lie about something like this, which I know was also extremely presumptuous at that point, but I was just trying desperately to figure him out. None of his actions were making any sense at all. Either way, I was just glad he didn't shoot me.

Gunshots sounded above our heads, and the building suddenly shook from what I assumed was an explosion of some kind – a pretty thick layer of dusty dirt falling from the ceiling and making me cough a bit. The Firefly looked ready to fight again, and it seemed like he was about to bolt off to enter the fray or whatever, but stopped still, glancing at me. I'm sure that me being there certainly broke some type of protocol, either that or he just had no idea what to do with me. Agreeing with the confusion of the situation, I shrugged at him and pursed my lips.

He muttered something under his breath that I couldn't hear because shit was still going down above us, before just tugging a pistol from his hip and shoving it into my quaking hands. I locked eyes with him, extra confused now.

"Lets just pretend we never saw each other down here. You go to your people, I go to mine. Nobody else needs to die, alright?" I was extremely taken aback by how nice this guy turned out to be. I was almost unbelievably lucky, and I knew that.

What he said caught my attention in another way, though, "Hold on, you don't want to kill us?"

He kept glancing upward, no doubt wanting to help his comrades but also being just as immersed in this conversation as I was. We both kinda wanted to see what the other side's motives were, "No. Not all of us were on board with what happened earlier today. I didn't go. But what boss says goes, doesn't matter what we think." He was getting antsy.

I spoke quickly, "Hey, my friends and I didn't want to come here either. We're Warwick newbies, we've never been involved in this feud or whatever the fuck it is. All we know is that you took one of our friends, and we need to get her back. Then we'll leave."

At the mentioning of the hostages, something in his expression changed. It's hard to describe, but at that point, I was positive that this dude was going to help us get Clarice out of there, "Oh Jesus, the whole fucking hostage fiasco was such a goddamn mess." He took a step closer to me, staring dead at my eyes to make sure I got his point, "I am _not_ down with it. God, we all nearly shit our pants when they came back with those." He scoffed, "I mean, what the fuck are we gonna do with 'em?! This whole thing is fucking ridiculous and none of it needed to happen." He seemed exceptionally drained just from talking about it. Everything this guy said made me like him more.

I nodded in agreement. When I opened my mouth to respond, another explosion made everything tremble violently again and I staggered a bit. And this dude, this fucking dude, he reaches over and grabs my arm to make sure I don't fall over. Okay, there was the merciful I-have-a-conscience-and-I'm-not-gonna-kill-you thing, but this was a whole different level of being nice to potentially dangerous strangers.

"You wanna get to your friends? I'll bring you there. This place can be like a maze at night, especially if people are shooting at you." His words were frantic, I think he felt like he had wasted enough time chatting.

He turned around and started to head back the way he had come, presumably. I was at his heels. Now all I could hear was automatic fire and very muffled shouting of things I couldn't quite make out. I wondered just how much the element of surprise actually helped us out.

My abruptly acquired guide stopped at a ladder and looked at me for a second as if to make sure I was keeping up before ascending. It was still really dark, almost to the extent that I couldn't see him, but his slightly obnoxiously yellow jacket was making it possible. I climbed up as soon as there was enough space for me to, going two rungs at a time.

I was starting to realize that being separated from Red for this long was starting to really get to me. In the state she was in, I was less confident in her being able to defend herself properly, and just the thought of that made my chest constrict.

Once I got to the top, I was relieved to see that we were back in regular rooms not made out of dirt. Again, it was too dark to tell, but it seemed like there were boxes everywhere. The Firefly was hesitating at a metal door, hovering there with automatic rifle in hand now, looking back at me. I moved to be directly behind him.

He let out a dragging breath, "You gotta name?"

"Colleen."

"Well hi Colleen, I'm Dom. Pleasure to meet you. Are you a good enough shot with that thing?" He gestured to the pistol I hadn't noticed I was still holding.

I almost laughed at that question but kept it in, "Nope."

His brow furrowed at that information, "Are you good at hiding behind things?"

"I'd like to think so, yes." The gunshots that I was hearing (they were still happening the entire time we talked, so we were semi-shouting to be audible) didn't seem close by, so that was something at least.

"Well good, cuz you're gonna be doing a lot of that." He wiped some sweat from his forehead, but he still seemed conflicted. He put one hand on the doorknob but looked at me again before opening it, "Look, Colleen, we've both got friends up there. Mine will shoot at you, and yours will shoot at me. I'm making you a promise right now that I'll do my very best not to kill anyone, if you tell me the same thing." I just nodded vigorously, maintaining eye contact to show him I was for real.

I guess he believed me, because the next thing I knew, that door was thrown open and he burst into, surprisingly, the same room I had fallen from. When I hastily looked around for any signs of Red, Carmen, or the rest of them, I saw nothing but didn't let myself panic. Dom looked relieved at the realization that there was no immediate danger and quickly scanned the area. He stopped still at the Firefly corpses that were, awkwardly, the result of my friends. I didn't say anything.

"Ah shit..." He mumbled to himself, putting his rifle away as he ran forward. I trailed slowly behind him, feeling pretty guilty. I mean, we had no choice in whether or not to kill them, they would have undoubtedly done the same to us. Then again, we shot first. I did my best to hide my inner moral conflict from my expression and just watched him. He approached one of the corpses and turned it over so that it was face-up, " _Fuck..."_

My chest hurt. Stupidly, I asked, "...Did you know him..?" I grimaced to myself after that question had left me.

He sighed slightly, "Yeah. He was kinda an asshole but he had his moments." The wound was straight between the eyes, courtesy of Red, if I remembered correctly, "... least it was quick."

For some reason he didn't feel the need to check the other bodies. Maybe he just got distracted, since the gunshots were getting notably closer. He gestured to the staircase that had been my previous destination before this unintentional detour. He ran over to it, his abruptly quick pace startling me a bit. I scrambled to keep up at first, not entirely sure what prompted his sudden haste. We got to that fateful set of stairs in no time, but he was already half-way up when I even got to their base. It led to a surprisingly sturdy metal catwalk. From what I could see at a quick glance, there were four doors branching off from here. I was thankful for having Dom there even more – otherwise I was sure that I never would've picked the right way on my own.

The door he went to was the farthest one from us, but while we passed the others, I just got worried all over again. What if Red and all them had gone through a different one? What if they were wandering around the factory aimlessly, going in the exact opposite direction of the hostages? In all this goddamn chaos, I doubted my ability to find them. And Raleigh didn't seem like the type of guy to go too far out of his way to look for stragglers. The weight on my chest was making it hard to breathe.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when a door that we rushed by was opened up. Dom skidded to a stop on his heels and literally grabbed me, hiding me behind him as he turned to face whoever had entered. I guess when he had mentioned hiding behind things, he included himself as one of those. He wasn't quite big enough to totally hide me from view, but the fact that he was trying at all was sweet and confused me again as to why this guy was so crazy nice.

Due to his out of place protectiveness, I didn't see who the person was. Part of me wanted to look, to see if it was a Firefly or someone from Warwick, but I knew that Dom was attempting to keep me hidden for a reason, so I stayed put.

He let out a nervous breath and I felt him untense, his grip on my arm loosening, "Oh, hey Zoe." Clearly he didn't view her as a threat, since he let me go completely and moved a bit away.

A girl's head popped into my view and she looked almost comically quizzical, her eyebrow raised and her face in general very youthful. Her Firefly attire managed to make her look a bit older so it was hard for me to tell her age, but damn, she didn't seem old enough to be toting around a double barrel shotgun like the one she held.

"Uh, who's the chick?" She asked cautiously. They had to raise their voices to be heard, and neither of them were too relaxed, considering that our ambiance was still the sounds of exchanging gunfire.

Dom shrugged a bit sheepishly, "Colleen..." He didn't at all explain my origins to her.

Zoe looked me up and down a few times. It was obvious I wasn't a Firefly. But I doubted I seemed like a threat either. Sure, I was armed, but I held my pistol like it was an unsolved Rubix Cube and my overwhelming worry for Red and the others was almost making me physically tremble.

Finally, the girl just sighed and shook her head back and forth slightly, "Yuri's flipping shit."

"I expected as much." Dom started to proceed forward again, but he was only jogging now. I followed, and Zoe tagged along this time too. "Anyone hurt?"

Zoe scoffed just as we reached the door, "Well, yeah."

He hovered, not opening it yet so he could respond, "I mean _our_ anyone." For some reason that made perfect sense to me although it was worded sort of weird. Zoe just shook her head back and forth.

All this talk was just making me freak out more and more about _my_ anyone. It had been a solid ten or fifteen minutes since I'd laid eyes on Red, and in a situation like this, my panic was completely justified.

Dom exhaled slightly and grasped the door's handle before locking eyes with me, "They were in here, last time I checked. I dunno if anyone's watching them, though, so be careful." I just nodded, although I honestly barely processed what he had said.

He opened this door slowly, and the anticipation was agonizing. I wasn't sure what I expected, to find them dead, not there, fine and dandy, or what, but what laid behind it was far from anything I could've anticipated.

It was a fucking stand-off. The room we entered was extremely cluttered and filled with all sorts of half-walls and makeshift dividers. It was huge, kind of like the one we had just been in, except it looked like people had tried to separate it into a bunch of office-like spaces. Desks were scattered about, computers with blank monitors on them, the occasional blood splatter here and there, you know, typical post-apocalyptic decor. That stuff wasn't what caught my attention, though.

Though the scene as a whole was partially concealed by a large bookshelf acting as a sort of wall, I spotted Red immediately. She had her gun aimed at someone not in view, and the look on her face showed the most pure, raw distress I had ever seen on anyone before in my life. Carmen was there too, SMG also raised and ready to fire, but nobody was shooting.

Dom noticed my wide eyes and slightly dropped jaw, and when I instinctively took a step forward, wanting to help, he restrained me effortlessly by extending his arm in my path. I shot him a slight glare, but he simply put a finger to his lips, then pointed at something. When I looked, I saw none other than Clarice kneeling on the ground, hands tied behind her back, looking absolutely terrified. She was also very stiff. Oddly so.

I got his meaning. This room was so weirdly disorganized and awkwardly arranged that I could easily stay out of sight if I wanted. Knowing that I had to interfere in some way, I just let out a long exhale in an attempt to compose myself and shoved the pistol Dom had given me back into his hands. He took it, confused, but understood when I withdrew my knife. A flash of something was visible on his face for a moment too. I think he realized that I had been armed before he had given me that gun, and that I could've killed him if I had wanted, but I hadn't. I guessed we were sort of even at that point, all things considered.

Flipping out my knife's blade, I got into a crouch and stuck to the abundant shadows as I started to slink in the direction of Clarice. It was then that people started to talk.

"Red, stay cool, c'mon, this doesn't have to be-"

" _Shuddup_."

That had been Finn trying to talk sense into her. I was surprised he was even trying, I mean you could tell just form looking at her face that it was pointless. Her voice shook and just showed everyone how unstable she felt. God I needed to help.

"You little _shits_ shouldn't even fucking be here. Why aren't you with your other scumbag friends downstairs?!" An unfamiliar voice hissed in response. Whoever had spoken they sure sounded terrifying.

"We're just here for them, that's it! Nobody needs to get hurt!" Carmen's voice sounded.

"Why the _fuck_ should I give them up, huh? Because you asked nice?" The scratchy, intimidating voice spoke up again.

"Cuz I've got a _fuckin'_ _gun_ to your head you piece of _shit!_ " Red was not at all level-headed enough to be doing much of anything at that moment, let alone trying to negotiate rationally.

At that point I was nearing Clarice, but she was way too immersed in what was going on to notice my approach. When I glanced over my shoulder, I spotted Dom following me a bit, though he was a fair distance away and not crouching like I was. Granted, there was enough background noise for my strategy to seem a bit overkill, but better safe than sorry.

"And _I've_ got a fucking gun to this one's head, now don't I?"

" _If you hurt her, I swear to_ _God_ _I'll-"_

So that's why Clarice was stiff as a statue. There was a gun aimed straight at her. I stopped in my tracks. How could I undo her bonds if she was being watched so closely?

"- What? Shoot me? You'd really risk her life for that?"

I looked over my shoulder again and was startled to see Zoe approaching the scene in a determined stride, scowling. I turned my full attention to her, but she got out of sight as she presumably stood right in the middle of this dangerous situation.

" _Yuri, back the fuck off_." Damn this girl had balls.

Dom grumbled something audibly under his breath, looking both frustrated and concerned about the position Zoe had just put herself into. He wasn't moving to help her though, instead sticking a bit more by me.

"Stay the hell out of this!" God he sounded pissed.

"This is fucking ridiculous, look at what-" She stopped mid-sentence for a reason I couldn't see. I was starting to get more and more mad at the fact I didn't have full view of what was going on and had to try and piece it together, but I didn't want anyone to know I was there just yet, "-how bout you get that gun out of my goddamn face?"

That seemed to be the last straw for Dom, and he moved forward too, ready to get involved. However right as he did, the door we had entered through was thrown open so hard that it slammed against the wall, making quite a damn ruckus. When I looked, my stomach dropped at the sight of Raleigh, his clothes splattered with blood though he himself seemed unharmed. He scanned the room for a second and spotted Dom. When he did, he raised his gun at him, since he _was_ a Firefly. Fuck.

I shot to my feet as well and stood in Raleigh's line of fire, but the guy looked so damned rattled I wouldn't have been surprised if he pulled the trigger anyways, " _Don't._ " I blurted out instinctively, unable to remain silent anymore.

He was out of breath in a way that made him sound bestial, "Get out of the way," I'd never seen him so mad. It made my blood run cold but I didn't budge, which didn't make him too happy, " _Fucking move._ " I managed to shake my head back and forth a bit, but that was the only response I could give.

"Raleigh?" Finn piped up again. That caught his attention and he turned from me for a second.

"The fuck are you doing here?" Now focused on Finn, Raleigh walked straight past us. Deciding that I needed to see what was going on myself, I emerged from the cover of this bookshelf-wall and looked over – at the side closest to Clarice. She was still too terrified to notice me there at all.

Wow this whole thing was even more complicated than I had made it look in my head. Finn, Zeke, Carmen and Red all stood on one side of this confrontation, the latter two with their guns drawn, Finn standing with clear ambivalence on the sidelines. Zeke had his eyes glued to Clarice and he looked so concerned that he was put into a sort of catatonic state. Clarice and a few others I didn't quite recognize were tied up and clustered near me, and there was a Firefly standing in front of them. That was scary-voice man, from what I could infer. Goddamn was he tall. He actually had _two_ pistols, matching, one mere inches from Clarice's forehead and the other trained on Zoe, who stood between the two opposing sides in a failed attempt to mediate. She had even holstered her own shotgun before directly interfering. A second Firefly guarded the hostages by standing behind them, but he was unarmed from what I could tell.

Raleigh glanced over the entire scene and seemed pretty indifferent, which annoyed me to say the very least. God he seriously was a selfish asshole. He locked eyes with the tall, scary Firefly though, and shot him a death glare that made me feel even more threatened than when he had his gun pointed at my chest.

"Why didn't you little _fuckers_ just _stay_ in your goddamn hovel?! None of this would've had to happen!" Tall Firefly man shouted. He had a slight accent that I couldn't quite place. Might've been Russian.

Raleigh took a step forward to emphasize his words, "Well if _you_ hadn't-"

" _Don't fuckin' bicker right now!"_ Red literally screamed at them both, stopping an argument before one could really happen, _"Let her go and I'll just leave!"_ Her knuckles were white as she held onto her pistol. I was starting to sweat. She had yet to even notice me, she was so immersed in the situation. It was hard not to be.

"Why the _fuck_ should I give them back to you?!"

"Because _we_ don't need them, Yuri!" Zoe insisted, though still not daring to move too much.

He scoffed at her. I was amazed she even had the courage to speak, I was struck dumb when Raleigh had his huge ass magnum in my face, "And _they_ didn't need to raid us so many goddamn times! We're just returning the favor, but with a different type of cargo!"

At the use of the term "cargo" to describe Clarice's life, I knew something in Red would snap. I managed to look at her just in time to catch her aggressively step forward, and she no doubt would have blown this dude's brains out had he not been keeping his eye on her. In defense, he turned both of his own pistols straight at her, and it was at this retaliation that I couldn't prevent my actions. I lunged forward with my knife, going straight for tall dude's neck, but he noticed. Before I could dig the blade into his jugular like I _so_ wanted to (my abruptly acquired blood lust was a bit startling to me), he grabbed my wrist, dropping one of his pistols to the floor in the process. He was strong and it successfully kept me at bay, though I struggled against his grasp, pushing against his resistance but the bastard wouldn't fully budge. The sharp edge was practically pressing against his skin, though, which was enough to faze anyone.

Now Red had definitely noticed me, it was impossible not to. My eyes flitted from Yuri's bared teeth to her, as I tried to analyze her expression and keep him in check. She just kept looking between Clarice and I, over and over, and the color drained from her skin visibly. She was coming even further undone now that I was thrown into this mess too. Goddamn this entire thing just seemed like an over-the-top action movie. At this point, I would've definitely been swapped out with a stunt double.

"Yuri, just put your fucking gun dow-" Dom had stepped up finally in an attempt to put an end to all this nonsense, but stopped short when he was shot a certain look. I was sort of getting the vibe that this Yuri guy was some type of Firefly higher up, because Zoe and Dom didn't seem to be totally sure on whether or not they should be protesting against his will. Either way, it seemed like they were literally incapable of just letting this shit happen without trying to help, which was admirable.

Red was seriously falling apart at this point. Her hands started to shake and all of her previous nerve was just dwindling down to nothing. If you knew her well enough, which I was assuming both Clarice and I did, it was showing on her face in a way that just made your heart shatter. She was _so_ overwhelmingly concerned, I'd never seen anything like it. Red wasn't overly emotional – she of course had her moments, everyone did, but I had never seen her shed tears or get too out of control that she couldn't calm herself down. Right then, though? I wasn't sure if she'd be able to get it together. And in the midst of this fucking fiasco, that could be fatal.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when she started to actually _lower_ her gun, looking like she was more than willing to do anything in the world if it meant Clarice and I would be safe. Raleigh was standing off to the side next to Finn, and he had slightly withdrew his own aim as well, though he kept glancing between Dom, Zoe and Yuri in a hostile manner, not at all trusting them, which was reasonable for the latter.

"Don't hurt them, a-alright?" God I had never heard her voice so unsteady. More than anything I just wanted to drop everything, go over and give her a hug, reassure her that things were okay, that _I_ was okay, but I knew that was impossible at the moment. You could tell that she was being genuine, it was evident on her face. Carmen sort of followed Red's lead, pointing her gun at her feet gradually.

Showing Yuri that I was just as willing to take back my previous outburst, I stopped trying to embed my knife into his skin and started to draw away. It took a few lingering seconds, but he cautiously released his grip on me, actually allowing my withdrawal. Right as he bent down a bit, likely to pick up his dropped weapon, chaos ensued.

One of the other hostages, someone who I barely recognized from seeing around Warwick, I guess hadn't been bound properly because he broke free at some point, and simply pretended to be restrained, waiting for a proper moment. When Yuri had let his guard down slightly and was reaching for his second pistol, this guy shot to his feet and literally _tackled_ him to the ground. Of course everyone freaked out and burst into their own sort of tension-induced instinctive action – it was extremely hard to follow and I can still barely comprehend all of what occurred in those thirty seconds of bustle.

Zeke's first reaction was to go straight for Clarice when he had the chance, and he did just that, rushing toward the poor teenage girl who was absolutely paralyzed by fear. It was sweet – the relief that she felt upon Zeke being nearby was shown clearly on her face, and the kid shot her a charming little smile before untying the ropes that bound her as quickly as he could.

While he did that, the other Firefly that had been completely idle for the majority of this encounter, even going unnamed, tried to approach the scuffle Yuri was now undergoing with the escaped hostage – but Carmen was there to prevent that. She rammed the butt end of her SMG straight into the side of his head, which for some reason didn't knock him out, but sent him staggering. He ripped a combat knife from his hip and lunged at her with it, slashing wildly, but he was obviously downed with ease since she had a _fucking_ _gun_ , I mean come on. He did get a good blow in on her chest, though, since she had tried to give him a chance to back down, which he stupidly didn't take. I couldn't judge how serious it was from afar.

Raleigh actually aimed his gun at Zoe, which Dom did _not_ appreciate. He must've remembered what we had said before about not wanting to intentionally kill people on each other's sides, though, because all he did was walk up to him and punch our "leader" hard across the face. When he understandably faltered, Dom took the chance to do some weird kind of military-grade combat move where he disarmed Raleigh, but it didn't neutralize him, and the two got into this weird kind of impromptu fist-fight that Zoe was trying to break up.

Red was no doubt planning on joining Zeke in order to help Clarice get free, but had to take a few moments to gather herself before doing much of anything. These brief seconds were jam-packed with even more things to process, and I could see it was overwhelming her. She locked eyes with me, the both of us breathing heavily, and right as she started to move, she was tripped on the odd sort of wrestling match that Yuri had gotten into with his previous hostage – falling straight on her face.

All of the previously explained bullshit literally happened over a course of like, fifteen seconds, and my mind was practically short-circuiting at this point. I wasn't even sure what Finn was doing at that time, but found out later that he had gone to the other two hostages and started to free them.

When Red literally face-planted, I rushed to her aid, hauling her to her feet as she had already started to stand up herself.

Right when I opened my mouth to try and say something, to try to shout maybe and stop all of this commotion, a particularly loud gunshot did it for me.

The bullet had come from one of Yuri's pistols. At that moment, he had been pinned down by the bold Warwick hostage, but managed to get his gun back and shoot the guy straight through his gut. He started to bleed profusely, it was pretty gross, but Yuri was disturbingly unfazed by it. Everyone sort of stopped at the same time, watching as the intimidating Firefly shoved the soon-to-be corpse off of him and got to his feet, veins on his neck practically popping from pure rage. Oh shit we had set him off even more than I thought was possible.

I allowed myself a brief glance around. Zeke had completely freed Clarice, and the two now stood up, the former shielding the latter with his own body in the case of another outburst that may involve bullets. Finn had gotten the bonds off one hostage but literally stopped mid-motion when untying the other one's. Carmen had just finished off that foolish Firefly, in self-defense, and stood, conflicted over his corpse – her own fresh wound adding more blood to the already tainted floor. Raleigh was actually so dazed he was leaning against a wall for support, and Zoe was shaking her hand from pain. She had punched Raleigh so hard that her knuckles bled. Damn.

Yuri assessed the situation. The hostages were freed. The only two Fireflies left in the room with him weren't at all agreeing with what he was doing and hadn't seemed to support it since it all started out. He had guns, but so did everyone else in the room. I think he realized at that moment that it was pointless to keep trying. His lip was bloodied from his previous scuffle, top of his collar torn. His bony shoulders were slightly hunched over and his heavy breathing made him sound like some rabid animal that had escape from the zoo. Nobody moved a muscle.

Finally, he just managed out between his ragged breaths, " _Get. Out."_

I was out that goddamn door in what seemed like a fraction of a second, followed by the rest of the Warwickians. Dom gave me a bit of a nod when we went by, but I honestly could barely manage to return it.

All of the combat in the rest of the factory had, as a whole, died down quite a bit. Raleigh seemed more than fed up with everything that had just happened, and he made a beeline for the exit without even trying to round up the others that may be scattered around. Finn offered to do it, since nobody else would. Surprising some of us, Dom and Zoe emerged from the room too, thankfully without their unstable comrade. Zoe went with Finn in order to try and calm the tensions between Firefly and non-Firefly, and from what I later learned, it worked out pretty well. Dom stuck with me for a minute or so while the others headed out.

"Look, after all that shit, Yuri's not going to let us stick around here anymore." He explained. His voice was low, like what he was telling me was top secret. Red was hovering at the base of the nearby staircase – I could feel her questioning eyes on me. She was waiting, probably not wanting to get separated yet again when we had only just been reunited.

"Is he your boss or something?"

"Kinda. Firefly ranks are weird, it's too complicated to get into, but the point is, he calls the shots and we listen. I'm guessing we're gonna be moving out soon – word has it we've gotta head somewhere in St. Louis or something." Sweat dotted his brow visibly and he seemed absolutely exhausted. I should've been too, but honestly I was still so full of adrenaline I could barely see straight – the tiredness had yet to set in.

"What's in Saint Louis?"

He sighed slightly, "I have no fucking clue. Doesn't matter. Listen, I know you're heading out, but I wanted to give you this," He reached into his back pocket and tugged out a folded up piece of paper, putting it into my slightly outstretched hand and making my hand clasp it tightly by wrapping his own around it, "It's a map. Marking where I think Madaket might be. There's no way I'll be able to investigate it now, but nothing's stopping you. There's also some other weird sketches I drew, and some notes that might help. Please excuse my handwriting." He smirked at me, patted the back of my hand, and released it.

I smiled slightly back at him, and put the important parchment into a zippered pouch on my fancy new utility belt I had nearly forgotten about, "Thanks, Dom." He just nodded and pointed vaguely down towards Red, whom he evidently noticed. I glanced at her and noted her confused, slightly protective expression. Zeke and Clarice lingered nearby too, but were chatting with one another, "I should probably get going..." With that I took slow steps toward the stairs, for some reason finding leaving to be weirdly hard. I was positive I'd never see him again, and I seriously owed him my life.

As he started to turn and walk in the opposite direction, I called out again, "No, seriously. Thank you. For everything."

The sound of his warm, slight chuckle echoed off of the walls of the expansive room, "Don't mention it, Collie."


End file.
